Getagged: Chicago
75. Poetry Foundation Announces Library Open House
CHICAGO — The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetrymagazine, will host an open house to celebrate the expanded hours and programs of its library. Festivities include readings by local poets of favorite poems from the library collection, poetry fortune-telling, poetry recording sessions, and a scavenger hunt. Wine and light refreshments will be served.
The Poetry Foundation Library houses the organization’s 30,000-volume collection—including books dating back to 1916—which had previously been in storage at Chicago’s Newberry Library. The noncirculating collection is now open to the public at the Poetry Foundation’s new home.
The first floor of the Poetry Foundation Library houses single-author volumes of poetry as well as a children’s area filled with more than 3,000 volumes of poetry books written for young people. The second floor contains anthologies and prose, including criticism, literary history, and biography.
The library’s special collections feature some notable volumes, including W.B. Yeats’s 1939 Cuala Press edition of On the Boilerand Louis Zukofsky’s 1956 collection Some Time. According to Poetry Foundation librarian Katherine Litwin, “The collection contains an amazing number of first- and limited-edition titles. As we continue to inventory the collection, we will undoubtedly discover many more treasures.” The Californians by Robinson Jeffers, published 95 years ago, currently ranks as the library’s oldest book, and a 1935 edition of The Dream Keeper by Langston Hughes features Hughes’s inscription to Poetry’s founding editor Harriet Monroe.
More highlights from the special collections include a first edition of Delmore Schwartz’s Vaudeville for a Princess, an early version of The Sleeping Fury by Louise Bogan, and a first U.S. edition of Ariel by Sylvia Plath.
The Poetry Foundation Library will extend its hours this fall and expand its children’s programming. The library, now open to the general public on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 11 a.m. until 4 p.m., will also be open Fridays from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. as of September 9. Beginning September 14, the library will be open on Wednesdays exclusively for young patrons and their guardians from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., when librarians will be on hand to help young people with poetry-related homework and projects. Also on Wednesdays, and beginning September 21, the library will host Poemtime, an event introducing children age five and under to poetry through fun, interactive games.
The Poetry Foundation is open to the public from 11 a.m. until 4 p.m. Monday through Friday.
For more information about this and other Poetry Foundation events, please visit www.poetryfoundation.org/events.
28. Second City Founder Bernard Sahlins Directs Under Milk Wood
U of C Professor Emeritus Nicholas Rudall in Dylan Thomas’s role
CHICAGO — The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetrymagazine, is pleased to present Dylan Thomas’s masterworkUnder Milk Wood in a staged reading. Dylan Thomas wrote the radio play just a month before his tragic death at age 39.
What: A staged reading of Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood.
Who: Directed by Bernard Sahlins. Performed by Nicholas Rudall, Timothy Kazurinsky, Suzanne Petri, Brad Armacost, Rengin Altay, and Bruce Jarchow. Stage managed by Michael Cansfield. Sound by Kurtis Productions.
When: Two performances
Sunday, December 12, 7:30pm
Monday, December 13, 7:30pmWhere: Victory Gardens
Richard Christiansen Theater
2433 North Lincoln Avenue
Tickets $10; $5 students
Purchase tickets by visitingwww.poetryfoundation.org/events
Called a “play for voices,” Under Milk Wood follows the dreams and innermost thoughts of the inhabitants of an imaginary seaside Welsh village called Llareggub. The villagers are a colorful bunch of eccentrics who, in a work of great poetic beauty, decide to cordon off Llareggub from the “sane world.” Six actors will perform over sixty roles in this play, Dylan Thomas’s final work.
45. 56th Annual Poetry Day with Frank Bidart
Acclaimed Poet to Read at Chicago’s Harold Washington Library
CHICAGO—The Poetry Foundation and Poetry magazine are pleased to present the 56th annual Poetry Day. Award-winning poet Frank Bidart will be the featured reader at the celebration in Chicago.
What: 56th Annual Poetry Day featuring Frank Bidart
When: Thursday, October 14, 6:00 pm
Where: Cindy Pritzker Auditorium
Harold Washington Library Center
400 South State Street
Tickets: Free admission on a first-come, first-served basis
Initially influenced by T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, and later by his teacher Robert Lowell, Frank Bidart has expanded the possibilities of poetry and established himself as one of the most original and compelling poets of his generation. Bidart is the author of eight critically acclaimed collections, includingDesire, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award; Star Dust; andWatching the Spring Festival. Bidart received his second Pulitzer nomination for Music Like Dirt, the only chapbook ever to be so honored. He won the Poetry Society of America’s Shelley Memorial Award in 1997, the Wallace Stevens Award in 2000, and the Bollingen Prize in 2007. A past chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, Frank Bidart has taught at Wellesley College since 1972.
Inaugurated by Robert Frost in 1955, Poetry Day is one of the most distinguished poetry reading series in the country, featuring poets of note such as T.S. Eliot, Elizabeth Bishop, Carl Sandburg, W.H. Auden, Anne Sexton, John Ashbery, James Merrill, Adrienne Rich, Gwendolyn Brooks, Rita Dove, Billy Collins, Seamus Heaney, Derek Walcott, and Robert Hass.
For more information, please visit www.poetryfoundation.org.
* * *
About Poetry
Founded in Chicago by Harriet Monroe in 1912, Poetry is the oldest monthly devoted to verse in the English-speaking world. Monroe’s “Open Door” policy, set forth in Volume 1 of the magazine, remains the most succinct statement of Poetry’s mission: to print the best poetry written today, in whatever style, genre, or approach. The magazine established its reputation early by publishing the first important poems of T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Marianne Moore, Wallace Stevens, H.D., William Carlos Williams, Carl Sandburg, and other now-classic authors. In succeeding decades it has presented—often for the first time—works by virtually every major contemporary poet.
35. Poetry magazine presents “Lives of the Dead”
CHICAGO — Poetry magazine is proud to present a theatrical interpretation of Hanoch Levin’s epic poem “Lives of the Dead,” translated from the Hebrew by Atar Hadari.
A deeply macabre and wickedly funny “anti-elegy,” Levin’s rumination on death, decomposition, and the afterlife is at once flagrant and tender, graceful and perverse. The poem, says translator Atar Hadari, is “a look at death by someone who very much did not believe in the ‘afterlife,’ but nevertheless saw and expressed all the hopes which even the most irreligious keep in the deepest, most secret closets of their hearts.”
Directed by Valerie Jean Johnson (managing editor of Poetry), a talented ensemble of young Chicago performing artists bring Levin’s captivating poem to the stage.
What: A theatrical interpretation of Hanoch Levin’s “Lives of the Dead,” conceived and directed by Valerie Jean Johnson, devised and performed by Katie Eberhardy, Joshua Kent, Martine Moore, and Jessie Mutz, with sound design by Noé Cuéller
When: Eight performances
Thursday, September 30, to Sunday, October 10
Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 7pm
Sundays at 3pmWhere: Viaduct Theater
3111 North Western Avenue
Free admission; reserve tickets by calling 773.296.6024 or visitingwww.viaducttheatre.com
Hanoch Levin (1943–1999), one of Israel’s leading dramatists, was born in Tel Aviv and studied philosophy and literature at Tel Aviv University. Having originally focused on writing poetry, Levin eventually devoted himself to writing for the stage. He served as resident playwright of the Cameri Theater in Tel Aviv and worked with Habimah, Israel’s national theater. A writer of 50 plays (34 of which have been staged), including comedies, tragedies, and satiric cabarets, Levin directed most of his works himself. He published five books of short stories and poems and a book for children, received numerous theater awards, both in Israel and abroad (most notably at the Edinburgh Festival), and has had his plays staged around the world. Levin was awarded the Bialik Prize in 1994.
Atar Hadari was born in Israel, grew up in England, and studied poetry and playwriting with Derek Walcott at Boston University. His Songs from Bialik: Selected Poems of Hayim Nahman Bialik (Syracuse University Press, 2000) was shortlisted for the American Literary Translators Association Award. His poems have won the New England Poetry Club’s Daniel Varoujan Award and the Grolier Poetry Prize.
Hadari’s translation of Levin’s poem was first published byPoetry in May 2009.
97. Poetry Foundation Announces Fall 2010 Literary Series
CHICAGO — The Poetry Foundation is pleased to announce its Fall Literary Series for 2010. The schedule features readings, talks, and interpretive performances. Highlights include “Seeing Things,” a collaboration with the Art Institute of Chicago, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and Hubbard Street Dance Chicago; a reading by Naomi Shihab Nye; and the 56th Annual Poetry Day with Frank Bidart.
*****
Wednesday, September 15, 6:00 pm
Poetry Off the Shelf: Valerie Martínez and Silvia Curbelo
Jazz Showcase
Dearborn Station
806 South Plymouth Court
Free admission
Valerie Martínez is a poet, teacher, translator, playwright, librettist, editor, and collaborative artist. Her first book of poetry, Absence, Luminescent (1999), won the Larry Levis Prize and a Greenwall Grant from the Academy of American Poets. A book-length poem, Each and Her, is out this year, as is her collection of Santa Fe poems (written during her tenure as poet laureate of Santa Fe), And They Called It Horizon. Her poems have also appeared in various anthologies of contemporary poetry.
Silvia Curbelo is the author of three collections of poetry: The Geography of Leaving, The Secret History of Water, andAmbush. Among her many laurels are fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Florida Arts Council, and the Cintas Foundation. Her poems have been published in literary journals and more than two dozen anthologies. A native of Matanzas, Cuba, she lives in Tampa, Florida, where she is managing editor for Organica magazine.
Co-sponsored with the Guild Complex and Letras Latinas
*****
Thursday, September 30, 6:00 pm
Poetry Off the Shelf: Seeing Things
Franz Wright
Fullerton Hall
Art Institute of Chicago
111 South Michigan Avenue
Free admission
Through his 14 collections, Franz Wright has written sharply perceptive, keenly felt poems that attest to his ability to shape revelation from darkness and transform the past into a luminous present. Walking to Martha’s Vineyard (2003) was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Wright has also translated poems by René Char, Erica Pedretti, and Rainer Maria Rilke. In 2008 he and his wife, Elizabeth Oehlkers Wright, co-translated a collection by the Belarusian poet Valzhyna Mort, Factory of Tears. He has received the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry, as well as grants and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Whiting Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Wright is currently the writer-in-residence at Brandeis.
Co-sponsored with the Art Institute of Chicago
*****
Thursday, October 14, 6:00 pm
Poetry Day: Frank Bidart
Cindy Pritzker Auditorium
Harold Washington Library Center
400 South State Street
Free admission
Now in its 56th year, Poetry Day is one of the oldest and most distinguished reading series in the country. Inaugurated by Robert Frost, Poetry Day has featured such poets as T.S. Eliot, Marianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop, W.H. Auden, Seamus Heaney, and Adrienne Rich.
In a career spanning 30 years, Frank Bidart has established himself as one of the most original and compelling poets of his generation. Initially influenced by T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, and later by his teacher Robert Lowell, Bidart has expanded the possibilities of poetry. He is the author of eight critically acclaimed collections, including, most recently, Desire, Star Dust, and Watching the Spring Festival (all from Farrar Straus & Giroux). Bidart won the Poetry Society of America’s Shelley Memorial Award in 1997, the Wallace Stevens Award in 2000, and the Bollingen Prize in 2007. A past chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, he has taught at Wellesley College since 1972.
Co-sponsored with the Chicago Public Library
*****
Sunday, October 24, 7:30 pm
Monday, October 25, 7:30 pm
Poetry on Stage: The Misanthrope by Molière, translated by Richard Wilbur
Richard Christiansen Studio at Victory Gardens
2433 North Lincoln Avenue
773.871.3000
Tickets $20; $10 students
Hardly a year has gone by in over two centuries that has not seen numerous productions of The Misanthrope, making it one of the most enduring comedies of all time. Richard Wilbur’s translation of Molière’s comic masterpiece is in rhymed verse. We meet afresh Alceste (the title character), his friends, and his fiancée. The outspoken Alceste finds them all vain, hypocritical, and insincere, while his own comic flaw lies in considering himself flawless. Bernard Sahlins directs a cast of talented Chicago actors in this staged reading.
*****
Thursday, October 28, 6:00 pm
Poetry Off the Shelf: John Balaban and Le Pham Le
Ruggles Hall
The Newberry Library
60 West Walton Street
Free admission
John Balaban is the author of 12 books of poetry and prose, including four volumes that together have won the Academy of American Poets’ Lamont prize, been selected for the National Poetry Series, and earned two nominations for the National Book Award. His Locusts at the Edge of Summer: New & Selected Poems won the 1998 William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America. In 2003 he was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. Balaban is a translator of Vietnamese poetry and a past president of the American Literary Translators Association, as well as a poet-in-residence and professor of English in the creative writing program at North Carolina State University in Raleigh.
Born in Vietnam, Le Pham Le attended the University of Pedagogy in Saigon, where she earned a BA in Vietnamese language and literature. After teaching high school for five years, she left her country with her family during the fall of South Vietnam. Her first publication is a bilingual collection of Vietnamese poems entitled Gio Thoi Phuong Nao/From Where the Wind Blows (Vietnamese International Poetry, 2003).
*****
Thursday, November 4, 6:00 pm
Poetry Off the Shelf: Seeing Things
Naomi Shihab Nye
Fullerton Hall
Art Institute of Chicago
111 South Michigan Avenue
Free admission
Naomi Shihab Nye has spent 35 years traveling the world, leading workshops, and inspiring students of all ages. Nye was born to a Palestinian father and an American mother and grew up in St. Louis, Jerusalem, and San Antonio. Her numerous books of poetry include You & Yours (a best-selling poetry book of 2006). Other works include seven prize-winning poetry anthologies for young readers. A collection of poems for young adults, Honeybee, won the 2008 Arab American Book Award in the Children’s/Young Adult category. Nye has held fellowships from the Lannan and Guggenheim Foundations as well as the Library of Congress. In January 2010 she was elected to the board of chancellors of the Academy of American Poets.
Co-sponsored with the Art Institute of Chicago
*****
Sunday, November 14, 4:00 pm
Poetry Off the Shelf:
Thomas Lynch: Bodies in Motion and at Rest
Thorne Auditorium
Northwestern University School of Law
375 East Chicago Avenue
312.494.9509 or www.chicagohumanities.org
Tickets $5; free for students and teachers with ID
Tickets go on sale to Chicago Humanities Festival members on Tuesday, September 7, and to the general public on Monday, September 20
Lynch is the author of three collections of poems and three books of essays. A book of stories, Apparition & Late Fictions, and a new collection of poems, Walking Papers, were published this year. His work has also appeared in the Atlantic, Granta, the New York Times, the Times of London, the New Yorker, andParis Review. Lynch lives in Milford, Michigan, where he has been the funeral director since 1974, and in Moveen, County Clare, Ireland. He reads from his work and reflects on his unusual perspective as poet and undertaker, and what this duality brings to his writing. After the reading, Lynch will be interviewed by the president of the Poetry Foundation, John Barr.
Co-sponsored with the Chicago Humanities Festival
*****
Friday, December 3, 6:00 pm
Poetry Off the Shelf: Seeing Things
Idylls of the King
Fullerton Hall
Art Institute of Chicago
111 South Michigan Avenue
Free admission
British photographer Julia Cameron’s 19th-century tableaux of Tennyson’s Idylls of the King are brought to life with images, verse, and music. Actor/playwright Christopher Cartmill directs and performs, assisted by actor Mary Ernster.
Co-sponsored with the Art Institute of Chicago
*****
Sunday, December 12, 7:30 pm
Monday, December 13, 7:30 pm
Poetry on Stage
Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas
Richard Christiansen Studio at Victory Gardens
2433 North Lincoln Avenue
773.871.3000
Tickets $20; $10 students
Just a month before his tragic death at age 39, Dylan Thomas completed this radio play about a town called Llareggub (say it backwards). The inhabitants of this small Welsh town by the sea are, to say the least, a colorful bunch of eccentrics who, in a work of great poetic beauty, decide to cordon off Llareggub from the “sane world.” Bernard Sahlins directs a cast of talented Chicago actors in this staged reading.
107. Poetry Foundation Builds a Home in Chicago
Poetry Foundation building to be one of nation’s leading poetry centers, new Chicago cultural destination, and permanent home for Poetry magazine
CHICAGO — The Poetry Foundation announced today that it has begun construction of a new home (poetryfoundation.org/building) that will be Chicago’s first building dedicated solely to the art form of poetry and the first permanent venue for Poetry magazine in its nearly 100-year history in the city.
The new building, in the city’s River North neighborhood, fulfills a century-old vision of Poetry magazine founder Harriet Monroe. Writing her first editorial in 1912, Monroe imagined that ultimately the magazine would help poets pursue their art, increase public interest in poetry, and raise poetry’s profile in society.
The Foundation unveiled details about the new building and its future programming during a presentation at the Arts Club of Chicago on Wednesday.
The new building’s primary purpose is to help the Foundation carry out its mission of discovering and celebrating the best poetry and putting it before the largest possible audience. The ground floor of the two-story building will be devoted to public use, including a multipurpose performance space expected to be one of the leading venues for the spoken word, a public garden, a 35,000-volume non-circulating collection that is currently in storage, and an exhibition gallery.
“This new home will have a dramatic, positive impact on our mission. We will be able to invite new audiences into the world of poetry through our public spaces, expanded programming, and new partnerships,” said Poetry Foundation President John Barr during the announcement event. “It will offer to poetry lovers a destination, a physical engagement with the art form.”
The Foundation’s program staff, including the employees of Poetry magazine, the online, media, youth, and events initiatives, and the Harriet Monroe Poetry Institute, will be relocated from their current offices on Michigan Avenue to the second floor of the new building. In addition to housing current activities and the new library program, the Foundation’s new space will allow it to increase the number of public events it sponsors within its existing programs. Additional functions envisioned for the space include staged events combining poetry and the visual or performing arts; gallery exhibits from the Poetry archives; discussion groups with teachers and students; collaborations with other literary organizations; and audio and video archiving of on-site events.
“Since its founding by Harriet Monroe in 1912, Poetry magazine has been a proud resident of the city of Chicago. In all these years, however, we have never had a place we could truly call our own,” said Donald Marshall, chair of the Poetry Foundation’s board of trustees. “We envision this building as a permanent and enduring place where the Foundation, the magazine, and poetry itself can be a visible and vigorous presence in the local and national cultural world.”
Barr noted that the new building solidifies the organization’s relationship with Chicago and adds to the city’s reputation as a leading center of literary activity.
“The project reinforces the Poetry Foundation’s long-term commitment to the city of Chicago and is a testament to Chicago’s historic and ongoing role in the national literary culture,” said Barr. “We intend for this to be a new cultural destination in our city and to shine a national spotlight on the works of our great poets and on Chicago as the permanent home of one of the oldest and most important literary magazines in the English-speaking world.”
Scheduled to open in June 2011, the Poetry Foundation’s new home will be one of only a few public spaces in the nation built exclusively for the advancement of poetry.
“This building is a significant addition to the poetry landscape of the entire country,” said Barr. “To the east of us, Poets House has opened a beautiful new home in Manhattan. To the west, the University of Arizona houses their major poetry collection in a dedicated poetry center.”
The 22,000-square-foot building being constructed at the intersection of Dearborn and Superior streets was designed by the Chicago firm John Ronan Architects. Visitors will enter the building by walking through a garden that is conceived of as an urban sanctuary, a space that, in the words of the architect, “mediates between the street and the building, blurring the hard distinctions between public and private.”
Ronan said the design of the building and the strategic use of materials are intended to mirror the way in which people read poetry. “Just as good poetry doesn’t always divulge all of its meanings on first reading, the new building will engage the public’s curiosity and unfold in stages,” said Ronan, who is widely recognized as a leader among the younger generation of Chicago architects.
The project is intended to be environmentally sustainable and will comply with the Silver Level of the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED Rating System®. The building design integrates a number of sustainable design strategies and energy-efficient systems. An area planted with trees and open to the public makes up over 20 percent of the site. Other features include high-efficiency glazing systems, automated lighting controls, high-efficiency plumbing fixtures, a partial green roof, and finishing materials that are locally sourced and/or produced from renewable or recycled sources.
The total projected cost for the building, including land acquisition, is $21.5 million. Marshall said that in addition to other benefits associated with the “home for poetry,” the Foundation’s board sees constructing and owning a space designed specifically for poetry as a wise use of the organization’s assets.
Funding for Poetry Foundation programming has been made possible through a generous bequest from Indianapolis pharmaceutical heiress Ruth Lilly.
Lilly, who died in December at age 94, began her long association with Poetry magazine by submitting poems. Although they were not published, she apparently appreciated the magazine’s concern for fledgling writers. In 1986 she began endowing a $100,000 annual prize to poets in recognition of lifetime achievement. In 1989 she created Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowships of $15,000 each, awarded annually by the Poetry Foundation to undergraduate or graduate students selected through a national competition. In 2008 the Foundation increased the number of Lilly Fellowships awarded each year from two to five.
“The Foundation is deeply grateful to Ruth Lilly for her profound generosity to this organization and to the overall advancement of poetry in our society,” said Barr. “This building will stand as a living memorial to her and help spread her appreciation of poetry and its benefits to many others.”
68. Eleanor Ross Taylor Awarded 2010 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize
Award recognizes lifetime accomplishment with $100,000 prize
CHICAGO — The Poetry Foundation is pleased to announce that poet Eleanor Ross Taylor has won the 2010 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize.
Presented annually to a living U.S. poet whose lifetime accomplishments warrant extraordinary recognition, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize is one of the most prestigious awards given to American poets. At $100,000, it is also one of the nation’s largest literary prizes. Established in 1986, the prize is sponsored and administered by the Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. Over the last 25 years, the Lilly Prize has awarded more than $1,800,000. The prize will be presented at the Pegasus Awards ceremony at the Arts Club of Chicago on Tuesday, May 18.
In making the announcement, Christian Wiman, editor of Poetrymagazine, cited the strong reserve in Taylor’s poems and praised their “sober and clear-eyed serenity” and authority.
“We live in a time when poetic styles seem to become more antic and frantic by the day, and Taylor’s voice has been muted from the start. Muted, not quiet,” said Wiman. “You can’t read these poems without feeling the pent-up energy in them, the focused, even frustrated compression, and then the occasional clear lyric fury. And yet you can’t read them without feeling, as well, a bracing sense of spiritual largesse and some great inner liberty.”
A portfolio of 10 of Taylor’s poems will be featured in the May issue of Poetry. In introducing the selection, Wiman writes:
The winner of this year’s Ruth Lilly Prize is Eleanor Ross Taylor. I suspect the name will be unfamiliar to a number of our readers, the work to even more. Until the excellent selected poems,Captive Voices, was published by LSU Press last year, virtually all of Taylor’s work was out of print. Her slow production (six books in 50 years), dislike of poetry readings (“It seems to me that it’s all for the person and not the poetry”), and unfashionable fidelity to narrative and clarity haven’t helped matters. And yet, as is so often the case, what’s been bad for the career has been good for the poems. With their intricately odd designs and careful, off-kilter music, their vital characters and volatile silences, the poems have a hard-won, homemade fatedness to them. You can feel their future.
The awards ceremony will also celebrate the life of the Poetry Foundation’s late benefactor, Ruth Lilly, who died in December at age 94, with readings by Catherine Bowman, Ruth Lilly Professor of Poetry at Indiana University, and 2001 Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellow Ilya Kaminsky. In addition, Eleanor Ross Taylor’s editors Jean Valentine and Dave Smith—also poets and friends of hers—will be featured as part of the event.
“Poetry has had no greater friend than Ruth Lilly,” said Poetry Foundation president John Barr. “On this occasion, the 25th anniversary of the awarding of the prize bearing her name, we honor a life of extraordinary generosity and dedication to the art form.”
In 1985, Lilly endowed the Ruth Lilly Professorship in Poetry at Indiana University. In 1989 she created Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowships of $15,000 each, awarded annually by the Poetry Foundation to undergraduate or graduate students selected through a national competition. In 2008, the Foundation increased the number of Lilly Fellowships awarded each year from two to five.
In 2002 Lilly’s lifetime engagement with poetry culminated in a magnificent bequest that will enable the Poetry Foundation to promote, in perpetuity, a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture.
Eleanor Ross Taylor has published six collections of poetry:Wilderness of Ladies (1960), Welcome Eumenides (1972), New and Selected Poems (1983), Days Going/Days Coming Back(1991), Late Leisure (1999), and Captive Voices: New and Selected Poems (2009).
A mother of four grown children and a grandmother, Taylor now resides in Charlottesville, Virginia. She has received the Poetry Society of America’s Shelley Memorial Prize (1997–98), a fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1998), the Library of Virginia’s Literary Award for Poetry (2000), and the Aiken Taylor Award for Modern Poetry (2001). She was elected to the Fellowship of Southern Writers in 2009.
Previous recipients of the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize are Adrienne Rich, Philip Levine, Anthony Hecht, Mona Van Duyn, Hayden Carruth, David Wagoner, John Ashbery, Charles Wright, Donald Hall, A.R. Ammons, Gerald Stern, William Matthews, W.S. Merwin, Maxine Kumin, Carl Dennis, Yusef Komunyakaa, Lisel Mueller, Linda Pastan, Kay Ryan, C.K. Williams, Richard Wilbur, Lucille Clifton, Gary Snyder, and Fanny Howe.
23. Poetry Foundation Celebrates National Poetry Month
Programming includes Poetry magazine, poetry films, iPhone app, multimedia poetry tours, recitation contest, readings, online educational resources, and more
CHICAGO – The Poetry Foundation is pleased to announce an exciting array of literary events and programs in celebration of National Poetry Month, April 2010.
Poetry
For its April issue, Poetry has dispensed with the usual prose section in order to make room for extensive Q&A’s with the poets. Designed to enable readers to have a deeper experience with the poems in the issue, and also to give some insight into the questions that editors ask when considering submissions, the Q&A’s are probing, surprising, sometimes testy, and often funny. Poets featured in the issue include Rae Armantrout, Todd Boss, H.L. Hix, Cathy Park Hong, Devin Johnston, Adam Kirsch, Randall Mann, Spencer Reece Donald Revell, and Robyn Schiff. The Q&A’s are also available online atwww.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine.
Poetry Everywhere
Thirty-two new films debut as part of Poetry Everywhere, a poetry film series produced in association with WGBH Boston and David Grubin Productions. Featuring poets such as Seamus Heaney, Toi Derricotte, Kevin Young, and Marilyn Chin reading their work, the films air intermittently on public television. They are also available online at www.pbs.org/poetry andwww.poetryfoundation.org/poetryeverywhere. The just-released 2010 season of Poetry Everywhere introduces an accompanying iPhone application, available for free in the iTunes App Store, that offers selected videos from the project.
Multimedia Chicago and DC Poetry Tours
Featuring poems thematically related to each city and its unique neighborhoods and cultural landmarks, and showcasing the voices of a range of poets past and present—including Elizabeth Alexander, Thomas Sayers Ellis, and Robert Lowell in DC, and Gwendolyn Brooks, Carl Sandburg, and Stuart Dybek in Chicago—the Chicago and DC Poetry Tours include archival and contemporary recordings of poets and scholars as well as music, art, and photography. The Washington Post described the DC Poetry Tour as “a poetry-themed Acoustiguide, where the streets are your museum and where each picture is accompanied by a poem,” and noted the project’s focus on an “all too often hidden cultural history.” Both tours can be experienced virtually at or downloaded for mp3 players atwww.poetryfoundation.org/poetrytours, free of charge.
Readings
The Poetry Foundation will host several poetry readings in Chicago throughout National Poetry Month. Presented in association with the Art Institute of Chicago, Derek Walcott reads on April 1 in Fullerton Hall. On April 13, Indigo Moor, Roger Bonair-Agard, and Kelly Norman Ellis will read at the Jazz Showcase. Cornelius Eady will read at the Cindy Pritzker Auditorium of the Harold Washington Library Center on April 24.All readings are free and open to the public, with seating on a first-come, first-served basis.
Poetry Out Loud: National Recitation Contest
At the end of the month, 53 high school students will walk onstage to face their peers, armed only with poems they have memorized and made their own. One will walk away with the title of Poetry Out Loud National Champion and a $20,000 award. Poetry Out Loud is a partnership initiative of the Poetry Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts that encourages the study of great poetry by offering educational materials and a dynamic recitation competition to high schools across the country. The National Finals take place on April 26–27 in Washington, DC. More information is available atwww.poetryoutloud.org.
Harriet Monroe Poetry Institute
The Poetry Foundation recently released the first project of the Harriet Monroe Poetry Institute (HMPI), “Poetry and New Media: A Users’ Guide.” Intended for use by poets and others in the poetry community as a tool to help them rethink their relationship to copyright and fair use and thus to develop permissions practices that allow the greatest possible access to poems while still protecting the rights of creators, the report also includes recommendations intended to help the poetry community use new media for poetry education. The full report is available for free download atwww.poetryfoundation.org/institute.
Poetry Learning Lab
Teachers and students are invited to explore the Poetry Learning Lab, the Poetry Foundation’s recently launched media-rich online poetry experience. Developed with a team of teachers, librarians, and poets to provide an immersive educational experience with poetry, the Lab provides readers of all levels with the opportunity to practice close reading and listening skills and to think broadly and analytically about poetry and poetics. Resources available as part of the project include annotations, reading guides, audio and video recordings, discussion questions, writing ideas, teaching tips, and podcasts.Designed for anyone who wants to learn more about poetry, the Poetry Learning Lab is available atwww.poetryfoundation.org/learninglab.
Blog
The Poetry Foundation’s blog, Harriet, will host over 30 poets, including Brian Turner, Kwame Dawes, Rachel Zucker, and Wanda Coleman, for a month-long conversation about poetry, poetics, and the poetry blogosphere.www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet
24. Chicago Poetry Tour Announced as Finalist for National Magazine Award
ASME’s ‘Ellie’ recognizes “imaginative use of interactivity and multimedia”
CHICAGO — The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetrymagazine, is excited to announce that its Chicago Poetry Tour is a finalist for a National Magazine Award in Digital Media in the category of “Multimedia Feature or Package.” Fellow category finalists Esquire, New York, Newsweek, and Runner’s World are all past American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME) Award winners. This is the first ASME nomination for the Poetry Foundation.
The National Magazine Awards have been presented each year since 1966. The awards, sponsored by ASME in association with the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, are regarded as the “most prestigious in the magazine industry,” according to the New York Times.
“Chicago is and always has been an exciting place for poetry,” said Anne Halsey, media director at the Poetry Foundation, at the launch of the tour in April 2009. “The Chicago Poetry Tour makes clear the connections between the city’s rich literary history and its significant architectural, social, and cultural contributions.”
Featuring the work of a range of Chicago poets past and present—Gwendolyn Brooks, Carl Sandburg, Li-Young Lee, Haki Madhubuti, Harriet Monroe, Stuart Dybek, and many more—and addressing a variety of neighborhoods and landmarks—the Loop, Bronzeville, Maxwell Street, Haymarket, Pilsen, and New Chinatown among them—the tour includes archival and contemporary recordings of poets and scholars, local music, and historic photographs.
The tour also features the late legendary Chicago personality Studs Terkel; professor of Chicago literature Bill Savage; WBEZ’s Richard Steele; and slam poetry founder Marc Smith.
The downtown walking tour demonstrates how poetry shaped, and continues to shape, the heart of the city. From the Cultural Center to the Harold Washington Library, people can experience Chicago’s iconic architectural sights, including Millennium Park, the Art Institute, and the Fine Arts Building. The tour is also featured in the multimedia gallery of the City of Chicago’s official tourism website, www.explorechicago.org.
For more information on the Chicago Poetry Tour and the newly released DC Poetry Tour, please visit www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrytours.
41. Spring 2010 Events Schedule Released
Literary series replete with performances, readings
CHICAGO—The Poetry Foundation announces a diverse and exciting series of events for Spring 2010. Along with a series of poetry readings, the Poetry Foundation continues to explore Modernism in tandem with the Art Institute of Chicago and the Goodman Theatre, and poetry takes the stage in illuminating tragic and comedic plays. Noteworthy events include a reading by Nobel Prize winner Derek Walcott, a look at the avant-garde writers who shaped Modernism, and a performance of Seamus Heaney’s version of Sophocles’ The Cure at Troy.
*****
Thursday, February 4, 6PM
Poetry Off the Shelf: Rae Armantrout
Film Row Cinema
Columbia College
1104 South Wabash Avenue, 8th Floor
Free admission
Rae Armantrout is a professor of writing in the literature department at the University of California at San Diego. She is the author of 10 books of poetry, including Versed (Wesleyan, 2009), a finalist for the National Book Award, and Next Life (Wesleyan, 2007), which was selected by Publishers Weekly as one of the best poetry books of 2007.
Co-sponsored with Columbia College
