Monday Muse: Selection of Fall Readings

Below you'll find highlighted a selection of fall poetry readings with both well-established and emerging or mid-career poets.

✭ The Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, D.C., offers a wonderful setting for its O.B. Hardison Poetry Series, which kicked off September 28 with W.S. Di Piero and Rowan Ricardo Phillips. The next reading, on October 26, features Anthony Thwaite and Jaimee Hills; the latter is the 2014 winner of the Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize (for How to Avoid Speaking). 

Read a selection of Hills's poems.

Two more events complete the fall lineup: readings by Julianna Baggott and Laura Kasischke, on November 23, and Linda Gregerson on December 7. Gregerson will headline Folger's annual Emily Dickinson Birthday Tribute. 

Each of the readings begins at 7:30 p.m. in the Folger Theatre. Tickets cost $15.00.

Folger Poetry on FaceBook

✭ Chicago-based Poetry Foundation is sponsoring an extensive array of poetry-related events, including "Poetry off the Shelf", which on October 14 features a reading by The New Yorker poetry editor Paul Muldoon, author of One Thousand Things Worth Knowing (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015) and numerous other poetry collections; and a "Szymborska Celebration with Clare Cavanagh" on October 21. Author of numerous books, Cavanagh has translated a number of poetry collections by the late Wislawa Szymborska. 

Other poets scheduled to read this fall are Rae Armantrout (October 31), Jacqueline Woodson (November 1), Ciaran Carson (November 2), Patricia Smith and Reginald Dwayne Betts (November 10), and Tony Hoagland (December 10).

Poetry Foundation on FaceBook

✭ The Michener Center for Writers at The University of Texas at Austin includes in its fall Reading Series the October 15 interview of former U.S. Poet Laureate Charles Wright by Robert Casper, head of the Poetry & Literature Center at the Library of Congress. The event begins at 7:30 p.m. in Avaya Auditorium on campus.

Michener Center for Writers on FaceBook

✭ Columbia University's Heyman Center for the Humanities, New York City, has scheduled two "Women Poets at Barnard" events for the fall: "An Evening with Poet Rosanna Warren" (October 28) and "An Evening with Poet Fanny Howe" (November 4). 

Rosanna Warren Faculty Page, University of Chicago

Fanny Howe Author Page, The Heyman Center

The Heyman Center for Humanities on FaceBook

✭ In Washington, D.C., the active Poetry & Literature Center at the Library of Congress has planned a "Concert & Conversation Celebrating Robert Lowell" (6:30 p.m., October 16, Coolidge Auditorium, Thomas Jefferson Building) and a "Literary Birthday Celebration: Ezra Pound" (October 30, 12:00 p.m., Whittall Pavilion, Thomas Jefferson Building). 

The Lowell concert will feature the world premiere of composer Michael Hersch's "Carrion-Miles to Purgatory: Thirteen Pieces After Robert Lowell" and a discussion between Hersch and psychiatrist Kay Redfield Jamison about Lowell's creativity and psychological challenges.  (Though the event is free and open to the public, ticket reservations are needed.)

The Pound celebration will present readings by Elizabeth Arnold and Charles Bernstein, who also will discuss Pound's influence on their own writing. 

On November 4, 7:00 p.m., at The Hill Center at the Old Naval Hospital, book critic Ron Charles continues his much-praised program with a conversation with 2002 Bobbitt Prize recipient Alice Fulton. (This event is free and open to the public but reservations are required.)

2015-16 Poetry Events at LOC

✭ The fall lineup for Smith Poetry Series, The Poetry Center at Smith College, Northhampton, Massachusetts, includes Amy Uyematsu (7:30 p.m., October 15, Neilson Browsing Room), Arda Collins (7:30 p.m., October 27, Paradise Room, Conference Center), and Juan Felipe Herrera, U.S. Poet Laureate (7:30 p.m., December 1), Weinstein Auditorium, Wright Hall). 

Also take note of readings and other poetry-related events at Harvard's Woodberry Poetry Room, Bucknell University's Stadler Center for Poetry, Seattle Arts & Lectures, and University of Arizona Poetry Center. The latter offers a particularly strong events program, including appearances by Mark Doty, Alberto Alvaro Rios, Jerome Rothenberg, and Phillip Lopate.