Next Up – Dan Beachy-Quick

Poet Dan Beachy-Quick, author of Mulberry, Spell, North True South Bright, A Whaler’s Dictionary, and This Nest, Swift Passerine, among other titles, will make his first appearance in the New Writing Series this Thursday, November 5, at 4:30pm in the Soderberg Center Auditorium on the University of Maine’s flagship campus in Orono. The event is free and open to all, though seating is limited.

You can learn more about Dan Beachy-Quick here and here. A recent recording of him can be heard here.
If you’re on Facebook, you can join the NWS group here and view this event here.

The UMaine New Writing Series is sponsored by the English Department and the National Poetry Foundation with support from the Lloyd H. Elliott fund, the Milton Ellis Memorial Fund, the Honors College, and the Cultural Affairs/Distinguished Lecture Series Committee. Grateful acknowledgment is made to the Pulp & Paper Foundation for the use of the Soderberg Center. FMI contact Steve Evans on First Class or at 207-581-3818.

If you have a disability that may require accommodation for a NWS event, please contact Ann Smith in the office of Disability Support Service, 121 East Annex, 581-2319 (Voice) or 581-2311 (TDD).

Up Next – Elizabeth Willis

Poet Elizabeth Willis reads in the UMaine New Writing Series this Thursday, October 29, 2009, at 4:30pm in the Soderberg Center Auditorium on the University of Maine’s flagship campus in Orono.

Elizabeth Willis last read in the New Writing Series on a snowy January Thursday in 2005. She is the acclaimed author of numerous volumes of poetry—including Meteoric Flowers, Turneresque, The Human Abstract, and others—and the editor of Radical Vernacular: Lorine Niedecker and the Poetics of Place (Iowa).

As UMaine joins the world in celebrating the 150th anniversary of the first publication of On the Origin of Species, it’s worth mentioning that Willis’s book of poetry Meteoric Flowers (Wesleyan) draws its inspiration from the verses of  Charles Darwin’s grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, in which many scholars see anticipations of the grandson’s theory  of evolution.

On Facebook? Please consider joining the NWS group here.

The UMaine New Writing Series is sponsored by the English Department and the National Poetry Foundation with support from the Lloyd H. Elliott fund, the Milton Ellis Memorial Fund, the Honors College, and the Cultural Affairs/Distinguished Lecture Series Committee. Grateful acknowledgment is made to the Pulp & Paper Foundation for the use of the Soderberg Center. FMI contact Steve Evans on First Class or at 207-581-3818.

If you have a disability that may require accommodation for a NWS event, please contact Ann Smith in the office of Disability Support Service, 121 East Annex, 581-2319 (Voice) or 581-2311 (TDD).

Next Up – Bill Berkson

Poet Bill Berkson returns to the UMaine New Writing Series for the first time in eight years to deliver the second annual Milton Ellis Memorial Reading for fall 2009.

Berkson, a prolific writer and art critic long associated with the legendary New York School of poetry, is touring in support of Portrait and Dream, an ample volume of new and selected poems recently published by Coffee House. Berkson will read on Thursday, October 22, 2009, at 4:30pm in the Soderberg Center Auditorium on the University of Maine campus in Orono. The reading is free and open to the public, though seating is limited.

The Milton Ellis Memorial Fund was established in 2007 through a bequest from George H. Ellis (University of Maine ’41). Dr. Milton Ellis (1885-1947) was George Ellis’s father and a nationally known scholar and educator who long served as the English Department Chair at UMaine and edited the New England Quarterly between 1937-1945.

Berkson’s reading in Orono concludes a four-event tour of Maine. Click below for more information about individual events:

Gulf of Maine Books
Monday, October 19, 4pm

Language Arts Live at Bates
Monday, October 19, 7:30

Colby College Museum of Art
Tuesday, October 20, 5pm

Full New England itinerary here.

On Facebook? Consider joining the NWS group here.

The UMaine New Writing Series is sponsored by the English Department and the National Poetry Foundation with support from the Lloyd H. Elliott fund, the Milton Ellis Memorial Fund, the Honors College, and the Cultural Affairs/Distinguished Lecture Series Committee. Grateful acknowledgment is made to the Pulp & Paper Foundation for the use of the Soderberg Center. FMI contact Steve Evans on First Class or at 207-581-3818.

If you have a disability that may require accommodation for a NWS event, please contact Ann Smith in the office of Disability Support Service, 121 East Annex, 581-2319 (Voice) or 581-2311 (TDD).

Next Up – Selah Saterstrom

The New Writing Series is pleased to host a fiction reading by Selah Saterstrom, author of The Pink Institution (2001) and The Meat and Spirit Plan (2007), both from Coffee House. Saterstrom will read at 4:30pm on Thursday, October 8, in the Arthur Hill Auditorium on the UMaine campus. Dave Kress will make the introduction. Please note that this reading has been changed from the previously announced November 19 date.

Facebook event page here. Facebook group here.

The UMaine New Writing Series is sponsored by the English Department and the National Poetry Foundation with support from the Lloyd H. Elliott fund, the Milton Ellis Memorial Fund, the Honors College, and the Cultural Affairs/Distinguished Lecture Series Committee. Grateful acknowledgment is made to the Pulp & Paper Foundation for the use of the Soderberg Center. FMI contact Steve Evans on First Class or at 207-581-3818.

If you have a disability that may require accommodation for a NWS event, please contact Ann Smith in the office of Disability Support Service, 121 East Annex, 581-2319 (Voice) or 581-2311 (TDD).

Up Next – Rae Armantrout

Poet Rae Armantrout, author of Veil, Made to Seem, The Pretext, True, and many other volumes, including most recently Versed, will read in the UMaine New Writing Series on Thursday, October 1, 2009, at 4:30pm in the Soderberg Center Auditorium, Jenness Hall. The event is free and open to the public (though seating is limited).

A keynote performer in the NPF’s conference on The Poetry of the 1970s two summers ago, Armantrout also read in the New Writing Series in the spring of 2002 (Catie Joyce’s writeup for the Maine Campus is archived here).

ON FACEBOOK? JOIN THE NWS GROUP HERE.

The UMaine New Writing Series is sponsored by the English Department and the National Poetry Foundation with support from the Lloyd H. Elliott fund, the Milton Ellis Memorial Fund, the Honors College, and the Cultural Affairs/Distinguished Lecture Series Committee. Grateful acknowledgment is made to the Pulp & Paper Foundation for the use of the Soderberg Center. FMI contact Steve Evans on First Class or at 207-581-3818.

If you have a disability that may require accommodation for a NWS event, please contact Ann Smith in the office of Disability Support Service, 121 East Annex, 581-2319 (Voice) or 581-2311 (TDD).

Photo credit: Alan Bernheimer.

Next Up – Mei-mei Berssenbrugge

Poet Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, author of I Love Artists, Four Year Old Girl, Nest, and many other titles, kicks off the tenth-anniversary season of the UMaine New Writing Series this Thursday, September 17, at 4:30pm in the Soderberg Center Auditorium (Jenness Hall). The event is free and open to the public (though seating is limited). For a foretaste of Berssenbrugge’s distinctive voice and reading style, check out her page at PennSound.

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(Photo credit: Merredyth Messer).

Fall 2009 Poster

NWS Fall 2009 Poster

Click to enlarge.

NWS Seeks Volunteer Assistants

The New Writing Series seeks one or more volunteer assistants for the 2009-2010 academic year. Duties will include conducting background research on past, present, and upcoming writers; helping maintain electronic mailing lists; some website and blogging work (will train); cataloging an extensive audio-visual archive from previous seasons; organizing a Series-related poetry library; and assisting with on-campus visits and event coordination. Job requires good research, interpersonal, and organizational skills, and the ability to work independently. Volunteers will be expected to commit between three to five hours a week to the position. Though this is an uncompensated position, students will gain valuable experience in literary research and programming, and will have access to a wide spectrum of visiting writers and events. To learn more about this opportunity, contact NWS coordinator Steve Evans at steven dot evans at maine dot edu, or on First Class.

Fall 2009 Preview

The New Writing Series marks its tenth anniversary this fall and to celebrate we’ve put together an exciting seven-event lineup that combines return visits from poets Rae Armantrout, Bill Berkson, and Elizabeth Willis, with first time appearances by poets Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Dan Beachy-Quick, Douglas Rothschild, and fiction writer Selah Saterstrom. More details to follow, but for now, we invite you to mark your calendars for

17 Sep   Mei-mei Berssenbrugge
01 Oct   Rae Armantrout
22 Oct   Bill Berkson
29 Oct   Elizabeth Willis
05 Nov   Dan Beachy-Quick
12 Nov   Douglas Rothschild
19 Nov   Selah Saterstrom – Hill Auditorium, Barrows Hall

All events are free and open to the public. Readings take place on Thursday afternoons at 4:30pm in the Soderberg Center Auditorium in Jenness Hall (except where otherwise noted). If you have a disability that may require accommodation for a NWS event, please contact Ann Smith in the office of Disability Support Service, 121 East Annex, 581-2319 (Voice) or 581-2311 (TDD).

The UMaine New Writing Series is sponsored by the English Department and the National Poetry Foundation with support from the Lloyd H. Elliott Fund, the Milton Ellis Memorial Fund, the Cultural Affairs/Distinguished Lecture Series Committee, and the Honors College. Grateful acknowledgment is made to the University of Maine Pulp & Paper Foundation for the use of the Soderberg Center.

Event Report – Sullivan & Gordon

On April 2, 2009, in the penultimate event of the Spring 2009 New Writing Series schedule, Flarf poets Nada Gordon and Gary Sullivan read to an audience of nearly 60 people in Soderberg Auditorium. After a combined reading of about 40 minutes, Gordon and Sullivan took questions from the audience.

Gary Sullivan

Ben Friedlander

Nada Gordon

Documentation
For more photos, visit the NWS flikr page. The event was recorded on digital video tape by Carey Haskell.

Set Lit

For the first half of the reading, the poets read alternately. In the following set-list, GS beside a title denotes that Gary Sullivan was the reader, NG beside a title denotes that Nada Gordon was the reader.

1) To a Sought Caterpillar (GS)
2) An Abecedarian of Spam Senders (NG)
3) They of the Mayonnaise (GS)
4) Unicorn Believers Don’t Declare Fatwas (NG)
5) The Giraffe (GS)
6) A Fun fact About Light (NG)
7) Plop Takes (GS)

Nada Gordon
8] Ding
9) Between “Cartoon Sight” and “Floozy Winds”
10) Voice Dhoti Gong
11) Wrong Face

Gary Sullivan
12) Mmhmm
13) Anagrams of American Imperialism
14) Poem
15) Mooing Sound
16) Own Face
17) Kenfuckintucky
18) My Poetry
19) My Favorite Poets

Nada Gordon
20) I Love Men

Nada Gordon and Gary Sullivan (song)
21) “A Few of My Favorite/ Inexplicable Things”

Questions
1) Are there more poets like you out there?
2) What kind of reactions do you get from different audiences?
3) How long have you guys been together, either working professionally or personally?
4) When did you start combining comic art and poetry? (for GS)
5) What do you think the computer is going to be to poetry?
6) How did you write that question poem? (for Nada)
7) Do you guys have a specific writing process?
8] What kind of balance do you try to achieve between the realistic/ concrete and the absurd/ abstract in your poetry?