Poetry News & Events

Since 2018, Associate Professor of Writing Dorothea Lasky has invited a dazzling array of poets to the Lenfest Center for the Arts, including Ken Chen, CAConrad, Anaïs Duplan, Matthea Harvey, Douglas Kearney, Myung Mi Kim, Wayne Koestenbaum, Fred Moten, Cecilia Pavón, Celina Su, Cecilia Vicuña, and Abigail Chabitnoy.

Alumnus Cyrée Jarelle Johnson ’19 won the Lambda Literary Award in Gay Poetry with their book Slingshot.

This July, Finishing Line Press will publish a new collection of poems by writing alumna Alison Woods ’96, titled Bless This Home.

Alumnus Matthew Gellman ’18 has been named one of Adroit Journal’s 2020 Djanikian Scholars in poetry.

Alumnus Sam Ross ’13 recently won the 2020 Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry for his book, Company, published last February by Four Way Books.
 

Alumnus Adam O. Davis ’06 will promote his forthcoming poetry debut Index of Haunted Houses with a hotline that allows curious readers to interact with the book, which itself is concerned with old telephone technologies. The collection is the winner of the Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry, from Sarabande Books.

Adjunct Assistant Professor Vito Adriaensens's found-footage ciné roman, Entre Les Images, was shown at the Cadence Video Poetry Festival 2020 where it won in its category, 'Poetry by Video Artists'. 

Magma, a novel by Þóra Hjörleifsdóttir, translated by alumna Meg Matich ’15, will be published simultaneously in the US, by Grove Atlantic, and the UK, by Picador. Gunnhildur Jónatansdóttir, a translator and UNESCO grantee, said of Matich’s work, “Matich’s translation of Hjörleifsdóttir’s piercing tale of abuse verges on the poetic. She makes the prose come to life in a way that feels personal, an urgent tale told in confidence to the reader.” In Matich’s capable hands, the work in English speaks with humane urgency and lyrical power—the blood pressure of the book—while…

Valley of Empty Pockets, a book of poetry by alumnus Eric Helms ’12, will be published by Main Street Rag Press in April of 2020. 

Winner of the Diode Editions’ poetry contest, The Minister of Disturbances by alumnus Zeeshan Khan Pathan ’18 has received advance praise from such noted American poets as Edward Hirsch, who called the book a “passionately lyrical and deeply probing book of disturbances and dispossessions, of longing, quest and exile.” Poet Mary Jo Bang called the poems “brilliantly edgy.”

Undergraduate Writing Alumna Morgan Parker ’10 recently won the National Book Critic Circle Award in poetry with her book Magical Negro, published in February 2019.

Alumnus Cyrèe Jarelle Johnson ’19 was nominated for a Lambda for their book of poetry Slingshot. The book, published by Nightboat Books, came out in September 2019 to rave reviews.