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.

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.

Next up – Gary Sullivan & Nada Gordon

The New Writing Series welcomes poets Nada Gordon and Gary Sullivan to the UMaine campus for a performance on Thursday, April 2, at 4:30pm in the Soderberg Auditorium. Like all NWS events, this one is free and open to the public. If you have a disability that may require accommodation for this event, please contact Ann Smith in the office of Disability Support Service, 121 East Annex, 581-2319 (Voice) or 581-2311 (TDD).

Nada Gordon

Nada Gordon’s charm bracelet

Gary Sullivan

Nada Gordon was born on January 14, 1964 in Oakland, California. She spent a colorful, semi-nomadic childhood in Chicago, San Francisco, Mill Valley, Fairfax, and Bolinas. At thirteen, she passed a high school equivalency exam and enrolled at a junior college. She graduated from San Francisco State University’s creative writing program in 1984, and received her MA in literature from UC Berkeley in 1986. In 1988, she moved to Tokyo, Japan, where she taught English, wrote textbooks, sang in a band, studied butoh, traveled around Asia and Europe, and was a co-editor of the literary journal, Aya. She returned to the US in 1999 as a result of a protracted e-pistolary romance. She is the author of More Hungry (1985), Rodomontade (1985), Lip (1988), Koi Maneuver (1990), Anime (2000), Foriegnn Bodie (2004), V. Imp, and Folly. She lives in Brooklyn with Gary Sullivan. She blogs at Ululations.

Gary Sullivan is a poet, cartoonist, and blogger. His DIY comic, Elsewhere—which he started drawing and writing in 2005— explores biography as an artistic construct. Sullivan lives in Brooklyn with Nada Gordon. Together, they wrote the book Swoon. Sullivan’s most recent book is PPL in a Depot. He blogs at Elsewhere.

Up Next – Claudia Rankine

Jamaican-born poet, editor, and anthologist Claudia Rankine reads in the New Writing Series on Wednesday, March 25, 2009, at 8pm in Little Hall 130 on the flagship campus of the University of Maine in Orono. The event, which is cosponsored by the Honors College in conjunction with Honors 180: A Cultural Odyssey, is free and open to the public, though seating is limited.

Don’t Let Me Be Lonely

Claudia Rankine

Whether writing about intimacy or alienation, Claudia Rankine’s voice is one of unflinching and unrelenting candor, and her poetry is some of the most innovative and thoughtful to emerge in recent years. Born in Kingston, Jamaica, and educated at Williams College and Columbia University, Rankine is the author of four collections of poetry, including the award-winning Nothing in Nature is Private. In The End of the Alphabet and Plot, she welds the cerebral and the spiritual, the sensual and the grotesque. Her latest book, Don’t Let Me Be Lonely—an experimental multi-genre project that blends poetry, essays, and image—is an experimental and deeply personal exploration of the condition of fragmented selfhood in contemporary America. Of this book, poet Robert Creeley said: “Claudia Rankine here manages an extraordinary melding of means to effect the most articulate and moving testament to the bleak times we live in I’ve yet seen. It’s master work in every sense, and altogether her own.”

Rankine co-edited the anthology American Women Poets in the 21st Century: Where Lyric Meets Language, and her work is included in several anthologies, including Great American Prose Poems: From Poe to the Present, Best American Poetry 2001, Giant Step: African American Writing at the Crossroads of the Century, and The Garden Thrives: Twentieth Century African-American Poetry. Her work has been published in numerous journals including Boston Review, TriQuarterly, and The Poetry Project Newsletter. She lives and teaches in California.

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