Up Next – Grady Awards

The New Writing Series will wrap up its tenth anniversary year of literary programming with a special event featuring the winners of the Steve Grady Awards in Creative Writing. The celebratory reading will take place on Thursday, April 29, 2010 at 4:30pm in the Soderberg Center Auditorium. The event is free and open to the public, though seating is limited.

Event Report – Donald Revell

Poet, translator, and editor Donald Revell performed in front of a near-capacity crowd on Thursday, April 22, 2010 in the Soderberg Auditorium. Revell, who was the final visiting poet in the Spring 2010 New Writing Series lineup, read from Thief of Strings and his newest volume, The Bitter Withy, both published by Alice James Books, whose director Carey Salerno was also in attendance. Professor Steven Evans introduced Revell, who read for 40 minutes.

The event was recorded on digital videotape by Carey Haskell and as a wav file on a Zoom H4n digital audio-recorder by Steve Evans.

A photo set of Revell’s reading is available on the NWS Flickr page.

Set List — compiled by Jason Canniff  (after the jump)

Up Next – Donald Revell

The poet, translator, and editor Donald Revell will read in UMaine’s New Writing Series on Thursday, April 22, 2010.

The reading takes place at 4:30pm in the Soderberg Center Auditorium on the University of Maine’s flagship campus in Orono and is free and open to the public (though seating is limited).

Donald Revell is the author of eleven collections of poetry, most recently The Bitter Withy (2009), A Thief of Strings (2007), Pennyweight Windows: New & Selected Poems (2005), and My Mojave (2004), all from Alice James Books. Winner of the 2004 Lenore Marshall Award and two-time winner of the PEN Center USA Award in poetry, Revell has also received the Gertrude Stein Award, two Shestack Prizes, two Pushcart Prizes and fellowships from the NEA as well as from the Ingram Merrill and Guggenheim Foundations. He is also the author of three volumes of translation: Rimbaud’s A Season in Hell (Omnidawn, 2007), Apollinaire’s Alcools (Wesleyan, 1995) and The Self-Dismembered Man: Selected Later Poems of Guillaume Apollinaire (Wesleyan, 2004). Revell’s critical writings include Invisible Green: Selected Prose (Omnidawn, 2005) and The Art of Attention: A  Poet’s Eye (Graywolf, 2007). He is a Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Nevada Las Vegas.

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).

Event Report – MA Thesis Readings

The New Writing Series was proud to host two events this spring that celebrated the work done by Master’s Candidates in Creative Writing as they neared completion of their theses in fiction and poetry.

On Tuesday, March 23, 2010, poet Rebecca S. Griffin read a baker’s dozen of poems from the thesis she defended in fall 2009, after which Michael T. Fournier read excerpts from his novella “Hidden Wheel.” Griffin was introduced by her advisor Jennifer Moxley, Fournier by his advisor David Kress.

A week later, on March 30, 2010, poets Amy Jirsa and Rachel Perry performed from their manuscripts, introduced by Jennifer Moxley. Each poet read for roughly twenty minutes (see set lists below).

Lively Q&A sessions followed each reading.

The events were recorded on digital videotape by Carey Haskell and as wav files on a Zoom H4n digital audio-recorder by Steve Evans.

Some photographs of the events can be found on the NWS Flickr page. For Griffin & Fournier click here; for Jirsa & Perry, here.

Event Report – William Corbett

Poet William Corbett read before an audience of approximately 45 people in the New Writing Series on Thursday, March 18, 2010. Corbett began his set with selections from James Schuyler’s Other Flowers and concluded with poems by—and in dialog with—Philip Whalen. He also read from his own collection Opening Day, a “documentary poem” on Willem de Kooning, and “Tokyo Travel Diary.”

The event was recorded on digital videotape by Carey Haskell and as a wav file on a Zoom H4n digital audio-recorder by Steve Evans.

Photo sets of Corbett’s reading and a class visit are available on the NWS Flickr page.

Up Next – Eileen Myles

Poet Eileen Myles will read in the UMaine’s New Writing Series on Thursday, April 8, 2010.

The reading takes place at 4:30pm in the Soderberg Center Auditorium on the University of Maine’s flagship campus in Orono and is free and open to the public (though seating is limited).

Eileen Myles (born 1949, Cambridge, MA), lives in New York. Recent books include The Importance of Being Iceland (essays, 2009) and Sorry, Tree (poems, 2007). She ran St. Mark’s Poetry Project in the 1980s. In 1992 she conducted an openly female write-in campaign for President of the US. She is Professor Emeritus at the University of California, San Diego. Myles last appeared in the NWS in April 2001. She was also a featured performer at the National Poetry Foundation conference on The Poetry of the 1970s in summer 2008. Check out an extended biographical note here.

To learn more about Myles, visit her official website here (and an unofficial one here). To listen to Myles reading from her work, check out her page on PennSound. If you’re 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).