Raymond Danowski Poetry Library Reading Series

Tracy K. Smith, Feb. 17, 2018, Raymond Danowski Poetry Library Reading Series, Thirteenth Season, Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts, Emory University Tracy K. Smith, 22nd US poet laureate and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, gives a reading of her poems, as part of the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library Reading Series. She is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir, “Ordinary Light,” and three books of poetry. Her collection “Life on Mars” won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize and was selected as New York Times Notable Book. The collection is partly a tribute to her late father, an engineer who worked on the Hubble Telescope. “Duende” won the 2006 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets and an Essence Literary Award. “The Body’s Question” was the winner of the 2002 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. Smith’s reading at Emory is part of the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library Reading Series, now in its 13th season. Smith is the seventh U.S. poet laureate to be featured in the series, and the 31th reader overall.

Tracy K. Smith, Feb. 17, 2018, Raymond Danowski Poetry Library Reading Series, Thirteenth Season, Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts, Emory University Tracy K. Smith, 22nd US poet laureate and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, gives a reading of her poems, as part of the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library Reading Series. She is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir, “Ordinary Light,” and three books of poetry. Her collection “Life on Mars” won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize and was selected as New York Times Notable Book. The collection is partly a tribute to her late father, an engineer who worked on the Hubble Telescope. “Duende” won the 2006 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets and an Essence Literary Award. “The Body’s Question” was the winner of the 2002 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. Smith’s reading at Emory is part of the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library Reading Series, now in its 13th season. Smith is the seventh U.S. poet laureate to be featured in the series, and the 31th reader overall.

Beat poet, editor, performer, activist, artist, and educator Anne Waldman gives a poetry reading, the first in the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library Reading Series' 2017–2018 season. Waldman's visit is also part of the opening celebrations for the exhibition at the Woodruff Library's Schatten Gallery, The Dream Machine: The Beat Generation & the Counterculture, 1940–1975. A Beat writer and the co-founder of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, Waldman brings the spirit of the post-WWII counterculture to Emory's campus during her electrifying reading as well as other events that week.

Beat poet, editor, performer, activist, artist, and educator Anne Waldman gives a poetry reading, the first in the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library Reading Series' 2017–2018 season. Waldman's visit is also part of the opening celebrations for the exhibition at the Woodruff Library's Schatten Gallery, The Dream Machine: The Beat Generation & the Counterculture, 1940–1975. A Beat writer and the co-founder of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, Waldman brings the spirit of the post-WWII counterculture to Emory's campus during her electrifying reading as well as other events that week.

Juan Felipe Herrera is the current (2015-present) and first Hispanic U.S. Poet Laureate. The author of poetry, short stories, young adult novels, and children’s literature, Herrera was awarded the National Book Critic’s Award in 2009. Herrera was born in 1948 in Fowler, California, as a son of migrant farmers, and grew up in the southern agricultural communities of the state. He graduated from San Diego High School in 1967 and earned a BA in social anthropology from UCLA, where he became involved in the Chicano Civil Rights Movement. He went on to earn a master’s in social anthropology from Stanford University and an MFA from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. The author of many poetry collections and children’s books, Herrera is also a performance artist and activist for migrant and indigenous communities and at-risk youth. He has founded several performance groups and has taught poetry, art and performance in community galleries and correctional facilities. He was appointed California Poet Laureate in 2012 and the U.S. Poet Laureate in 2015, the first Chicano to hold the title. Herrera’s reading at Emory is part of the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library Reading Series, now in its twelfth season. Herrera is the sixth U.S. poet laureate to be featured in the series, and the 30th reader overall.

The first event in its 2017 “Memorial Drive” series with a program about two dynamic women who decided what films would be shown or banned in Atlanta movie theaters for four decades. Matthew H. Bernstein, Goodrich C. White professor and chair of Emory’s Department of Film & Media Studies, discusses “Controlling Atlanta Screens: Movie Censorship from the 1920s to the 1960s.” The event leads off the 2017 “Memorial Drive” series, a collaboration between ArtsATL.com and Emory’s Rose Library that explores the cultural history of Atlanta. “I am excited about the second season of 'Memorial Drive,’ ” said series coordinator Randy Gue, curator of modern political and historical collections at the Rose Library. “The series unites the Rose Library's unique collections about Atlanta and its past with ArtsATL.com's in-depth coverage of the arts and creativity in the metropolitan area." Bernstein’s talk explores the influence of Mrs. Alonzo Richardson and her successor, Christine Smith Gilliam, who were duty-bound to ban films that depicted unpunished crime or illicit sex as outlined by Hollywood’s Production Code. As movies grew more violent and morally ambiguous, the two women had their hands full, but they were equally focused on barring any depiction of social equality between the races.

Juan Felipe Herrera is the current (2015-present) and first Hispanic U.S. Poet Laureate. The author of poetry, short stories, young adult novels, and children’s literature, Herrera was awarded the National Book Critic’s Award in 2009. Herrera was born in 1948 in Fowler, California, as a son of migrant farmers, and grew up in the southern agricultural communities of the state. He graduated from San Diego High School in 1967 and earned a BA in social anthropology from UCLA, where he became involved in the Chicano Civil Rights Movement. He went on to earn a master’s in social anthropology from Stanford University and an MFA from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. The author of many poetry collections and children’s books, Herrera is also a performance artist and activist for migrant and indigenous communities and at-risk youth. He has founded several performance groups and has taught poetry, art and performance in community galleries and correctional facilities. He was appointed California Poet Laureate in 2012 and the U.S. Poet Laureate in 2015, the first Chicano to hold the title. Herrera’s reading at Emory is part of the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library Reading Series, now in its 12th season. Herrera is the sixth U.S. poet laureate to be featured in the series, and the 30th reader overall.

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and former U.S. Poet Laureate Rita Dove reads at the Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts on the Emory University campus Feb. 28, 2016. This was Dove’s second reading (her first was in 2007) in the acclaimed Raymond Danowski Poetry Library Reading Series, now in its 11th season. Since its debut in 2005, the series has brought a wide range of acclaimed contemporary poets to Emory’s campus, including Lucille Clifton, Mary Oliver, Billy Collins, Natasha Trethewey, W.S. Merwin, Seamus Heaney, Paul Muldoon, and Sharon Olds.

Charles Wright, the 2014-2015 U.S. Poet Laureate, is one of the most important American poets writing today. Born in 1935 in Pickwick Dam, Tennessee, he is the author of over 20 books of poetry. His many honors include the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 2014, he was named Poet Laureate of the United States. Here on October 1, 2015, Charles Wright reads at the Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts on the Emory University Campus for Season Eleven of The Raymond Danowski Poetry Library Reading Series.

The award-winning poet Carol Ann Duffy gave a poetry readying at Emory University on February 21, 2015. Duffy is the first woman and first openly gay poet to be named Britain’s Poet Laureate and a crucial figure in world poetry today. She is an award-winning Scottish poet who writes with power, beauty, humor and grace about love, death, and women’s lives. Duffy’s literary papers are housed at the Manuscript, Archives, & Rare Book Library at Emory. MARBL acquired Duffy’s archives in 1999, with a recent set of additions; the newly processed collection is now open and available for research.

Elizabeth Alexander is the eighth poet in the Raymond Danowski Reading Library Series and read in 2009. Look for her entire album on iTunes U. Elizabeth Alexander is a poet, essayist, playwright, and teacher. She is the author of four books of poems, including The Venus Hottentot, and American Sublime, which was one of three finalists for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize. She is also a scholar of African American literature and culture and recently published a collection of essays, The Black Interior. She has received many grants and honors, most recently the Alphonse Fletcher, Sr. Fellowship and the 2007 Jackson Prize for Poetry, awarded by Poets & Writers. She is a professor at Yale University, and was recently named the Inaugural Poet, only the fourth poet asked to read at a presidential inauguration.

Natasha Trethewey was the twenty-first poet of the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library Reading Series and read in 2012. Natasha Trethewey was born in Gulfport, Mississippi. She is the nineteenth Poet Laureate of the United States and the author of four collections of poetry, Domestic Work (2000); Bellocq’s Ophelia (2002); Native Guard (2006)—for which she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize—and, most recently, Thrall, (2012). Her book of nonfiction, Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, appeared in 2010. She is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Beinecke Library at Yale, and the Bunting Fellowship Program of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard. At Emory University she is Robert W. Woodruff Professor of English and Creative Writing.

Sonia Sanchez was the seventh poet to read in the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library Reading Series and read in 2007. Sanchez has won the American Book Award and the Robert Frost Medal, and held a Pew Fellowship in the Arts. Influenced by jazz, the blues and the oral tradition, Sanchez’s poetry readings and performances have inspired generations of poets and audiences alike. A founder of the Black Arts Movement, Sanchez is the author of more than 16 books. Does Your House Have Lions? was nominated for both the NAACP Image and National Book Critics Circle Award.

Galway Kinell was the sixth poet to read in the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library Reading Series and read in 2007. American poet Galway Kinnell's writing career spans more than five decades. In 1983 he received both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for Selected Poems (1982). His other volumes of poetry include: The New Selected Poems (2000), a finalist for the National Book Award; Imperfect Thirst (1996); When One Has Lived a Long Time Alone (1990); Mortal Acts, Mortal Words (1980); and Body Rags (1968). In 2002 he was awarded the Frost Medal for Lifetime Achievement by the Poetry Society of America.

Natasha Trethewey was the fourth poet to read in the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library Reading Series and read in 2006. Natasha Trethewey was born in Gulfport, Mississippi; her first poetry collection, Domestic Work won the inaugural 1999 Cave Canem poetry prize, selected by Rita Dove, and the 2001 Lillian Smith Award for Poetry. Her most recent collection, Native Guard, won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. She is currently the Phillis Wheatley Distinguished Chair in Poetry in Emory’s Department of English. The Raymond Danowski Poetry Library contains first editions of Trethewey’s works.

Kevin Young was the first poet of the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library Reading Series and read in 2005. Kevin Young is the author of six collections of poetry and the editor of four others. His first book, Most Way Home, was selected for the National Poetry Series by Lucille Clifton and won the Zacharis First Book Award from Ploughshares. His third book, Jelly Roll, was a finalist for the National Book Award and won the Paterson Poetry Prize; his most recent book, Dear Darkness, was featured in the New Yorker and National Public Radio as one of the “Best Books of 2008.” He is currently Atticus Haygood Profesor of Creative Writing and English and Curator of Literary Collections and the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library at Emory University.

Simon Armitage was the second poet in the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library Reading Series and read in 2005. Born in West Yorkshire, England, Simon Armitage has a degree in social work and worked as a probation officer in Manchester, England in the 1980s. Armitage is known for his distinctly northern British vernacular and dry wit; in Contemporary Poets, Brian Macaskill notes that Armitage's poetry brings to mind "Philip Larkin's late-career use of vernacular, slang locutions, and telling obscenities, Armitage often turns the commonplace or, especially, the vulgar phrase to epigrammatic effect." In 1999, the New Millennium Experience Company commissioned Armitage to write Killing Time in celebration of the new millennium.

Sharon Olds was the twenty-fifth poet in the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library Reading Series and read in 2014. Sharon Olds was born in San Francisco and educated at Stanford University and Columbia University. Her first book, Satan Says (1980), received the inaugural San Francisco Poetry Center Award. Her second, The Dead and the Living, was both the Lamont Poetry Selection for 1983 and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. The Father was short-listed for the T. S. Eliot Prize in England, and The Unswept Room was a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award and the winner of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize. Olds teaches in the Graduate Creative Writing Program at New York University and helped to found the NYU workshop program for residents of Goldwater Hospital on Roosevelt Island, and for veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. She lives in New Hampshire and in New York City.

Paul Muldoon was the twenty-fourth poet in the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library Reading Series and read in 2014. Paul Muldoon was born in 1951 in County Armagh, Northern Ireland, and educated in Armagh and at the Queen's University of Belfast. Since 1987 he has lived in the United States, where he is now Howard G. B. Clark '21 Professor at Princeton University. In 2007 he was appointed Poetry Editor of The New Yorker. Between 1999 and 2004 he was Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford, where he is an honorary Fellow of Hertford College. The author of over thirty books of poetry, Muldoon's most acclaimed collections include New Weather (1973), Mules (1977), Why Brownlee Left (1980), Quoof (1983), Meeting The British (1987), Madoc: A Mystery (1990), The Annals of Chile (1994), Hay (1998), Poems 1968-1998 (2001), Moy Sand and Gravel (2002), Horse Latitudes (2006), and Maggot (2010). A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Paul Muldoon was given an American Academy of Arts and Letters award in literature for 1996. Other recent awards are the 1994 T. S. Eliot Prize, the 1997 Irish Times Poetry Prize, the 2003 Pulitzer Prize, the 2003 Griffin International Prize for Excellence in Poetry, the 2004 American Ireland Fund Literary Award, the 2004 Shakespeare Prize, the 2005 Aspen Prize for Poetry, and the 2006 European Prize for Poetry.

Lucille Clifton was the third poet to read in the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library Reading Series and read in 2006. At 16, Lucille Clifton entered college early, matriculating as a drama major at Howard University. In 1969, poet Robert Hayden entered her poems into competition for the YW-YMHA Poetry Center Discovery Award; she won the award and with it the publication of her first volume of poems, Good Times. Clifton served as Poet Laureate of Maryland from 1979 to 1982, and in 2000 she won the National Book Award for her selected poems, Blessing the Boats. Her papers were acquired by Emory in 2006. In addition, MARBL obtained Lucille Clifton’s personal library, now part of the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library.

Don Paterson was the twentieth poet in the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library Reading Series and read in 2012. Don Paterson is the author of five books of poetry, most recently Rain (Faber, 2009; FSG, 2010). He has published two books of aphorism and a compendium, Best Thought, Worst Thought (Graywolf, 2008). He has also edited a number of anthologies. His poetry has won a number of awards, including the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, the Whitbread Poetry Prize, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Award, and the T S Eliot Prize on two occasions. Most recently, Rain won the 2009 Forward prize. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a Fellow of the English Association; he received the OBE in 2008 and the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 2010.

Linda Gregerson was the seventeenth poet in the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library Reading Series and read in 2012. A 2007 National Book Award finalist and recent Guggenheim Fellow, Linda Gergerson is the Caroline Walker Bynum Distinguished University Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Michigan, where she teaches creative writing and Renaissance literature. She is the author of five books of poetry—most recently The Selvage (2012)—two books of criticism, and the co-editor of one collection of scholarly essays. Among her honors and awards are an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, the Kingsley Tufts Award, four Pushcart Prizes, grants and fellowships from the Guggenheim, Rockefeller, Mellon, and Bogliasco Foundations, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Institute for Advanced Study, the Poetry Society of America, and the National Humanities Center.

Billy Collins was the eighteenth poet in the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library Reading Series and read in 2012. Former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins is an American phenomenon. No poet since Robert Frost has managed to combine high critical acclaim with such broad popular appeal. The author of eight collections, most recently Horoscopes for the Dead (2011), he has been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation and was the inaugural recipient of the Poetry Foundation's Mark Twain Prize for Humor in Poetry.

D.A. Powell was the seventeenth poet in the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library Reading Series and read in 2011. Born in Albany, Georgia, D.A. Powell is the author of four poetry collections: Tea (1998); Lunch (2000); Cocktails (2004); and Chronic (2009), winner of the Kingsley Tufts Prize. Twice a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry, he has received a Pushcart Prize and the California Book Award. His new collection, Useless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys will be published in February 2012.

C. K. Williams was the eleventh poet in the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library Reading Series and read in 2009. C.K. Williams is known for his daring formal style, which combines everyday observations with long, Whitmanesque lines. He has authored ten books of poetry, including Collected Poems (2006); The Singing (2003), winner of the National Book Award; Repair (2003), winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Award; and Flesh and Blood (1987), winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. Williams has also published translations of Sophocles, Euripides, and poems of Francis Ponge, among others. His honors include awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Twentieth Annual Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, an honor given to an American poet in recognition of extraordinary accomplishment.

Robert Pinsky was the twelfth poet in the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library Reading Series and read in 2010. Former Poet Laureate of the United States, Robert Pinsky is the author of seven volumes of poetry, including Gulf Music (2007) and The Figured Wheel: New and Collected Poems 1966-1996, which received the Lenore Marshall Award and the Ambassador Book Award of the English Speaking Union. Pinsky's most recent book is Essential Pleasures: A New Anthology of Poems to Read Aloud (2009). Pinsky's best-selling translation of The Inferno of Dante received the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Howard Morton Landon Prize for translation. Pinsky is one of the few members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters to have appeared on television's The Simpsons.

Toi Derricotte and Cornelius Eady were the sixteenth poets in the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library Reading Series and read in 2011. Toi Derricotte has published four books of poems, most recently the award-winning collection, Tender. Her literary memoir, The Black Notebooks, won the 1998 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Non-Fiction and was selected as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Cornelius Eady, a distinguished poet and playwright whose work is often evocative of blues and jazz, has been honored with fellowships from the NEA and the Guggenheim Foundation. He is the author of eight books of poetry, most recently Hardheaded Weather.

Matthew Dickman and Michael Dickman were the fifteenth poets in the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library Reading Series and read in 2011. Matthew Dickman is the author of All-American Poem, winner of the 2009 Oregon Book Award for Poetry and the APR/Honnickman First Book Prize. His poems plum the ecstatic nature of life, where pop culture and sacred longing to hand in hand. Michael Dickman, author of The End of the West, writes poems that document the bright desires and all-too-common sufferings of modern times. His many honors include a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University and the James Laughlin Award for his collection Flies (2011).

Eamon Grennan was the thirteenth poet in the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library Reading Series and read in 2010. Grennan's books include Matter of Fact (2008); The Quick of It (2005); Still Life with Waterfall (2001), the recipient of the Lenore Marshall Award for Poetry from the American Academy of Poets; and Relations: New and Selected Poems (1998). His Out of Sight: New and Selected Poems is forthcoming later this year. Grennan's Leopardi: Selected Poems (1997) earned the 1997 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. He as also the author of a collection of essays entitled Facing the Music: Irish Poetry in the 20th Century(1999). Grennan is a native of Dublin and divides his time between the U.S. and the west of Ireland.

Li-Young Lee was the tenth poet in the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library Reading Series and read in 2009. Award-winning poet Li-Young Lee is the author of five critically acclaimed books, most recently Behind My Eyes (2008). His earlier poetry collections are Book of My Nights (2001); Rose (1986), winner of the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award from New York University; The City in which I Love You (1991), the 1990 Lamont Poetry Selection; and the memoir The Winged Seed (1995) which received an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. Lee's other honors include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Lannan Foundation, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, as well as a Whiting Award.

Campbell McGrath was the ninth poet to read in the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library Reading Series and read in 2009. Campbell McGrath is a prize-winning and popular poet whose work explores the cultural and natural landscapes of the United States. McGrath's awards include the Kingsley Tufts Prize, a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship and a 1999 MacArthur "Genius Grant." McGrath's latest poetry collection is Seven Notebooks (2008); his previous collections include Florida Poems (2002), Spring Comes to Chicago (1996), American Noise (1993) and Capitalism (1990). McGrath currently teaches at Florida International University in Miami where he is Philip and Patricia Frost Professor of Creative Writing.