This Spring at the Poetry
Center
This annual reading at Amherst, Hampshire, Mount Holyoke and Smith and the University
of Massachusetts features two students from each institution. Smith poets will
be Georgia Pearle AC and Kimberley Rogers ’08.
Tony Hoagland’s poems seek to expose the wonders and blunders of American society.
He delves into the throes of adolescence, male culture and death itself -- it
is said no subject is too vulnerable or too private for Hoagland’s storytelling.
Hoagland’s three volumes of poetry include What Narcissism Means to Me, Donkey
Gospel and Sweet Ruin, along with a book of essays Real Sofistikashun.
“A new book of poems -- or of anything -- by Mark Doty is good news in
a dark time,” says W. S. Merwin. After seven volumes of poetry (an eighth on
the way) and three books of nonfiction, Doty uses his own voice to speak to a partner
lost to AIDS and unravel the themes of grief, sexuality and transformation. His work
has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The London Review of Books, Ploughshares, The
New Yorker and The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Poetry. Doty will also present
a lecture on nonfiction writing on March 26.
Praised by Linda Pastan as “a poet to be reckoned with,” Olds is considered
one of the country’s most gifted and widely read poets. Her work has appeared
in more than 100 anthologies. Recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation,
the National Endowment for the Arts and the Academy of American Poets, Olds currently
teaches poetry workshops in New York University’s Graduate Creative Writing
Program and lives in New York City. She is this year’s judge for the Smith
College Poetry Prize for High School Girls.
The last event of the Poetry Center’s 10th anniversary year will feature an
all-alumnae reading by Smith women from near and far, representing as many Smith
classes as possible.
The Poetry Center is inviting all alumnae to participate. Alumnae poets interested
in reading their poetry at the event may contact Ellen Watson, ewatson@smith.edu.
The reading will be preceded by a dinner and followed by a reception open to the
public.
Alumnae poets are also invited to submit their own poems as part of a Smith alumnae
Web anthology. Visit www.smith.edu/alumpoets for more information.
This Alumnae College minicourse, taught by Annie Boutelle and Ellen Doré Watson,
will offer readings and interactive discussion of the range of poetic voices of Smith
faculty beginning with W. H. Auden and continuing to today.
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