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Thursday, 4/1
- 7:00-9:00 PM: Opening Reception for a Joint Student Show by the Photography and Pottery programs.
Friday, 4/2
Saturday, 4/3
- 2:00-5:00 PM: Saturday Reading Cooperative
- 5:00 PM: Highwire Gallery and the Transparency Machine series
at the Kelly Writers House present Stephen Rodefer: "The Age in
its Cage: A Social Allegory of Literature and the Deformation of the
Canonymous." The Transparency Machine Series gives writers the chance
to situate their work in the context of wider cultural practices --
reading, writing, the visual arts, theory, politics, and mass media.
Stephen Rodefer is the author of several collections of poetry, including Left Under a Cloud (1999), Answer to Doctor Agathon (1995), Erasers (1994), Leaving (1992), Emergency Measures (1987), and Four Lectures (1977). Rodefer recently returned to the United States following three years teaching in Paris and two at Cambridge. He lives and works in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. He has been associated with the Language School Poets and was a student of Charles Olson. He has also taught at San Francisco State University, University of New Mexico-Albuquerque, and others. - 8:00 PM: Reading by Stephen Rodefer and Shawn Walker at the
Highwire Gallery, 139 N. 2nd Street, between Race and Arch.
Sunday, 4/4
Monday, 4/5
- 12-3:00 PM: National Poetry Month Kids Extravaganza on College Green
- 5:30 PM: Penn and Pencil Club
- 6:00 PM: "Being Boswell: Writing the Life of William
Styron." James West discusses literary biography and specifically
the challenges and rewards of writing a biography of a living writer.
James West III is one of the most eminent scholarly editors and literary biographers in the U.S. His recent biography of William Styron, William Styron, A Life, has won many awards. He is widely recognized as the most successful editor of the works of Theodore Dreiser; based on years of work with the manuscripts and typescripts (housed in Penn's special collections archive), his edition of Sister Carrie presented a novel radically different from the one most readers know. He is now at work on F. Scott Fitzgerald. He is a professor of English at Pennsylvania State University, and a senior resident fellow of the Humanities Center there.
RSVP for pizza dinner to follow.
Tuesday, 4/6
- 4:30 PM: Planning Committee Meeting: Objectives
- 6:00 PM: Reading by Victor Hernandez
Cruz. Co-sponsored with Greenfield Intercultural Center.
Victor Hernandez Cruz was born in Aguas Buenas, Puerto Rico and moved to New York City with his family at the age of five. In 1966, while living on Manhattan's Lower East Side, his first book of poetry, Papo Got His Gun was published. Cruz moved to California's Bay Area in 1968 and a year later, his second collection Snaps was published by Random House, giving him national exposure. In 1971 Cruz visited his home island of Puerto Rico and in reconnecting with this aspect of his identity, wrote the book By Lingual Wholes, a poetic study of bi-lingualism; eighteen years later, he returned to Puerto Rico to live. In 1991, his book Red Beans was published and was the recipient of the Winner of the Publishers Weekly "Ten Best Books of the Year" Award. A recipient of an NEA and a Latin American Guggenheim Fellowship, Victor Hernandez Cruz has published essays, articles, short stories and is currently completing a novel. Panaramas, his book of poems, essays and stories, was recently published by Coffee House in 1997.Recordings of this event are made available as part of the PENNsound project can be found here.
Wednesday, 4/7
- 7:00 PM: The Alumni Writers Series presents poets and artists John Yau
and Jeremy Sigler
John Yau, poet, prose writer, and critic, received a grant for his fiction from the New York Foundation for the Arts in 1998. Recent books include My Symptoms )(Black Sparrow, 1998), Forbidden Entries (Black Sparrow, 1996)l, and The United States of Jasper Johns (Zoland, 1996). His essay "Active Participant: Robert Creeley and His Collaborations with Artists" will be published in a monograph focusing on Creeley's collaborations with visual artists, in the spring of 1999 from the University Carolina Press. He has poems forthcoming in the American Poetry Review, Conjunctions, and Denver Quarterly. He lives in New York and teaches at the Maryland Institute, College of Art.
Jeremy Sigler is a University of Pennsylvania alumnus and received an MFA in sculpture from UCLA in 1996. He is a professor in the Foundations and Painting Departments at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. He has had exhibitions in New York, Mexico City, Maryland, Germany and California, and has published work in Inflatable Magazine, Oona Stern's Zine, Zingmagazine, and Lacanian Ink.
Thursday, 4/8
- 9:00 PM in the rear seminar room: "Romantics Attic: Readings of the Romantic Poets by Candlelight"
Friday, 4/9
- 12-1:30 PM: African Studies hosts Henry Lopes, a Congolese
writer speaking on the "Trajectory of an African Writer."
An assistant director-general for culture for UNESCO and a former prime minister of the Central African nation of the People's Republic of the Congo, Henry Lopes writes novels and short stories that comment on the disparity between developing and traditional Africa. Lopes's works have been published in Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Bulgarian, Ukrainian, Russian, German, Slovenian, Danish, and Italian. His first book of eight short stories is titled Tribaliques, and his first novel to be translated into English is titled Le Pleurer-Rire (The Laughing Cry).
Saturday, 4/10
- (Note: no Saturday Reading Cooperative today)
Sunday, 4/11
Monday, 4/12
- 8:00 PM: LIVE at the Writers House: a one hour spoken-word radio show
Tuesday, 4/13
- 7:00 PM: Barbara
Honigmann
Co-sponsored by the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures and part of the Kutchin Jewish Studies Seminars, sponsored by the Jewish Studies Program.
Barbara Honigmann is one of Germany's most prominent contemporary Jewish women writers. She is the author of Roman von einem Kinde (1986), Eine Liebe aus nichts (1991), Soharas Reise (1996) and two just published volumes, Am Sonntag spielt der Rabbi Fubball (1998) and Damals, dann und danach (1999). She lives with her family in Strasbourg, France.
Wednesday, 4/14
- 5:00-7:00 PM: Speakeasy Outside! Poetry, Prose and Anything Goes: open mic performance. E-mail wh@writing.upenn.edu for details.
- 6:00-8:00 PM: An Evening Conversation and Dinner with Gay Talese. Open to members of Talese's Literary Nonfiction course only.
Thursday, 4/15
- 6:00 PM: Reading by poet Susan Howe
Hosted by the Creative Writing Department
Part of Go West! Go International! 3rd Thursdays.
Susan Howe is a poet and critic, author of numerous influential books, including My Emily Dickinson, Birth-mark : Unsettling the wilderness in American literary history; Europe of Trusts; Defenstration of Prague; Non-Conformist's Memorial. Her work involves passionate historical investigation into voices and cultures that have been relegated to the margins of history; she is also one of the most innovative poets when it comes to use of typography.
Friday, 4/16
- 1:00-3:00 PM: Afternoon Creative Writing Majors Gathering
Saturday, 4/17
- 2:00 PM: Laughing Hermit Reading Series presents David Moolten.
David Moolten won the 1994 Morse Poetry Prize for his first
collection
Plums & Ashes. He has received numerous grants and fellowships
including a Pennsylvania Council of the Arts fellowship for literature.
His work has appeared in several journals.
- 2:00-5:00 PM: Saturday Reading Cooperative
Sunday, 4/18
- 1:00-4:00 PM: A Walt Whitman Excursion
A National Poetry Month collaboration between Walt Whitman Cultural Arts Center and the Kelly Writers House. Features a tour of Whitman's Camden home, a visit to his dramatic gravesite, and an open reading (outdoors -- weather permitting). Special guest poet Janet Hamill and her band Moving Star will perform. Janet Hamill's newest work is The Eternal Cafe, a collection of short fiction co-authored with Patti Smith. At the Walt Whitman Cultural Arts Center in Camden, New Jersey. For more information and directions to the Walt Whitman Cultural Arts Center at 2nd and Cooper Streets in Camden, contact the WWCA Center at 1-609-964-8300. - 11:00 PM: LIVE at the Writers House airs on 88.5 WXPN
Monday, 4/19
- 4:30 PM: Planning Committee meeting
- 5:30 PM: Penn and Pencil Club End of the Year Public Reading!
Tuesday, 4/20
- 4:30 PM: Talking Film presents: A Closer Look at Stanley Kubrick
Jeff Adler and Dan Fienberg show clips and discuss the good and the bad from Kubrick, including Full Metal Jacket, The Killing, Dr. Strangelove, Clockwork Orange, and 2001: A Space Odyssey. - 6:00 PM: Reading by poets Eli Goldblatt and Barbara
Cole
Eli C. Goldblatt was born in 1952 in Cleveland, Ohio, and grew up on Army posts in the U.S. and Germany. After earning his B.A. at Cornell University and working in farming, manufacture, and carpentry jobs, he attended Case-Western Reserve Medical School in 1975-76. He taught science, math, and English for six years in an urban alternative high school in Philadelphia, traveled in Mexico and Central America in 1980, and received an M. Ed. and certification in biology from Temple in 1982. He finished both an M.A. in literature (1984) and a Ph.D. in composition studies (1990) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He taught in the Department of English at Villanova University from 1990-96 and served as the Director of the Villanova Writing Program and the Writing Center in 1994-95. He planned and taught a literacy course that brought Villanova students as tutors to Graterford prison and other sites in the Philadelphia area during the spring semesters of 1994-96. He is currently the University Writing Director and an associate professor of English at Temple University. His poems have appeared over the last twenty years in many small literary journals, most recently in magazines such as Hambone, Paper Air, Another Chicago Magazine, Madison Review, Louisiana Literature, and Hubbub. His books of poems include Sessions 1-62 (Chax Press 1991), Journeyman's Song (Coffee House 1990), and Herakles: A Verse Play (Tamarisk 1981).Barbara Cole is a Philadelphia-area native who recently received her Masters Degree from Temple University. She is the poetry editor of Schuylkill, and is one of the editors of the poetry magazine pH. Her poems have recently appeared in ixnay magazine, and her chapbook Little Wives was published in the fall of 1998 by Potes & Poets Press. Most recently her second chapbook, Postcards, was published by BeautifulSwimmer Press.
This program was recorded and is available through PENNsound.
Wednesday, 4/21
- Tea with John Ashbery: an afternoon visit to Writers House. Penn students only; RSVP required to wh@writing.upenn.edu. See information below about Ashbery's reading later in the evening.
- 8:00 PM: John Ashbery reads at the Barclay Hotel, 237 S.
18th Street. Organized by the Philadelphia Art Alliance and the Creative
Writing Department. Tickets to the event are $5 or $15 for the event and
pre-program reception with refreshments. For tickets and information,
call the Art Alliance at 215-545-4302.
John Ashbery is the author of seventeen previous collections of poetry, as well as a volume of art criticism. Throughout his career, Ashbery has been recognized by critics as one of the most important
contemporary
American poets. He has been the recipient of countless prizes and awards,
including the Pulitzer Prize, the National book Critics Circle Award and
the National Book Award. He has also received a Guggenheim Fellowship and
a MacArthur Award. A graduate of Harvard University, Josh Ashbery was the
Charles Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard in 1989 and is currently the
Charles P. Stevenson, Jr., Professor of Languages and Literature at Bard
College. Some links to his work: "What
Is Poetry?", "The
Grapevine," "Some
Trees," Ashbery
on Gertrude Stein.
Thursday, 4/22
- 6:00 PM: Philly Talks presents: Bob Perelman and Susan
Stewart
Bob Perelman has published more than ten volumes of poetry, the most recent of which is The Future of Memory. In addition he's written two books of criticism, The Trouble with Genius: Reading Pound, Joyce, Stein, and Zukofsky, and The Marginalization of Poetry: Language Writing and Literary History. He was born in Youngstown, Ohio in 1947 and now lives in Philadelphia with his wife, Francie Shaw, and their sons, Max and Reuben Perelman. He teaches at the University of Pennsylvania.
Susan Stewart is a professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of three books of poetry, The Forest, Yellow Stars and Ice, and The Hive, and three critical works, Nonsense, On Longing, and Crimes of Writing.
- 8:30 PM: Reading by Kerry Sherin's Introduction to Creative Writing Class
Friday, 4/23
- Last Day of Classes
- Tentative: 1-5:00 PM: Planning Committee Session
- 7:00 PM: The Writers House Junior Fellow Program presents a
Discussion on Pseudonymy/Pseudography with
Kent
Johnson, Bob Perelman, Tan Lin, and Joshua
Schuster.
The Japanese poet Araki Yasusada (1907-1972), a survivor of Hiroshima who was influenced by Roland Barthes and Jack Spicer, was published in the past few years in several American and international journals. However, Yasusada, it was slowly discovered, does not exist. The Japanese-American author Tosa Motokiyu or his literary executor, Kent Johnson, has been credited with writing the poems. In light of the feigned authorship, the work has been called racist and an offensive example of "yellowface." Others have called the poems profoundly beautiful, strange and wonderful. The poems are collected Doubled Flowering: From the Notebooks of Araki Yasusada (Roof Books). The panel will begin with a reading of Yasusada poems by Johnson. Following will be a panel discussion on the motivations, morals and mysteries behind pseudographic writing and the pseudonym.You can hear a recording of this program in mp3 format here.
Saturday, 4/24
- 2:00-5:00 PM: Saturday Reading Cooperative
- 8:00-10:00 PM: Full Circle, an Open Mic for Philadelphia-area poets, hosted by Cecily Kellogg and Charlie O'Hay. Featuring Nzadi Keita. An open reading will follow.
Sunday, 4/25
Monday, 4/26
- 6:00 PM: Writers House Junior Fellows Program presents: a reading by Joshua Schuster from his new book by Handwritten Press, Project Experience followed by a discussion of The Future of Institutions with Joshua Schuster, Mike Magee, Al Filreis, and Shawn Walker.
Tuesday, 4/27
- Beginning at Noon: 24 Hour Writing Advising!
- Writers House and Talking Film present visiting poet Ray
DiPalma.
4:30 PM: Screening of two of DiPalma's short films
6:00 PM: Reading in the Arts Cafe
Ray DiPalma is the author of more than thirty collections of poetry and visual work. His recent books include The Jukebox of Memnon (Potes & Poets, 1988), Provocations (Potes & Poets, 1994), and Motion of the Cypher (Roof Press, 1995). His work has been praised by such notable poets as Jackson MacLow and Robert Creeley. Of Motion of the Cypher, critic Marjorie Perloff has written, "These chiselled lyric meditations recall Wallace Stevens in their density, but they are written under the sign of Dada - appropriate for the late twentieth century, that casts a cold eye on the margins, the spaces between, where we live."
This program was recorded and is available through PENNsound.
Wednesday, 4/28
- Noon: 24 Hour Writing Advising Ends
- 6:00 PM: Readings in Translation
Hosted by Conni Bille
A reading of Rilke in German and English, as well as other poets
** Bring a poem and at least one -- even better, two -- translations!
** How do different translators choose to interpret the poems?
** How would you change or enhance the translation?
Let us know (wh@writing.upenn.edu) if you'd like to come and share your favorite poem and a few translations of it! - 8:00-10:00 PM: Speakeasy: Poetry, Prose and Anything Goes, an open mic performance night
Thursday, 4/29
- 7:00 PM: "What to Wear?" A Reading by Elisa New of an
excerpt on Jewish women and clothes from her collection of essays on
Jewish culture.
Elisa New is the author of The Regenerate Lyric: Theology and Innovation in American Poetry (Cambridge Univ, 1993) and The Line's Eye: Poetic Experience, American Sight (Harvard Univ, 1997). Chiefly interested in the relationship of American religion to American literature, she has recently published articles on the Puritans and on Jewish-American fiction as well as on 18th- and 19th-century American literature. Ongoing projects include a book on the Jew in modern culture entitled Monolith/Shibboleth: The Modern Jew at the Multicultural Moment.
Friday, 4/30
