Poets Out Loud (POL), the poetry community at Fordham College at Lincoln Center, will kick off the 2013-14 year with its first poetry reading of the semester next week.
Tuesday, Sept. 17
7 p.m.
12th-floor Lounge / Corrigan Conference Center
Lincoln Center Campus | 113 West 60th Street
The opening installment of this year’s reading series will feature poets Aracelis Girmay, assistant professor of poetry at Hampshire College, and Amaud Jamaul Johnson, associate professor of creative writing at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Girmay, who specializes in African American, Latina, and multiethnic poetry, and Johnson, whose poems explore the roots of violence and desire, will read poems pertaining to themes presented in Alice McDermott’s novel Charming Billy, which was this year’s First Year Orientation book for incoming freshmen.
The popular reading series is one of two branches that form POL, which marks its 21st year this fall. The readings, which are free and open to the public, aim both to provide a platform for poets and to bring contemporary poetry to the community at large.
“We try to represent a range of poetic styles and to represent both developing poets at the beginning of their careers and established poets,” said the series director Heather Dubrow, Ph.D., the Rev. John Boyd, S.J. Chair in English and co-director of POL.
The book prize series, which is overseen and edited by POL co-director Elisabeth
Frost, Ph.D., professor of English, is an annual contest for poets with book-length poetry collections. The two winning books are published by Fordham University Press.
POL also conducts two outreach projects—one for senior citizens and another for high school students—that are aimed at bringing poetry to underserved communities. This year, POL’s high school outreach is expanding to include the High School for Enterprise, Business and Technology in Brooklyn, which joins existing POL partners Cristo Rey New York High School and Girls Write Now, a nonprofit mentoring program for young writers. Students gather for a workshop prior to each POL reading and are featured in the final reading series of the year.
The next POL reading will be cosponsored by the Poetry Society of America and will take place on Oct. 15.
For more information and to learn about upcoming events, visit the POL website.
