English Department Events, Fall 2008
11 Sep: Peter Gizzi
10-11 Oct: The Beat Generation Symposium
10 Oct: Joanne Kyger
11 Oct: Michael McClure
20-23 Oct: Creative Nonfiction Week
5 Nov: John Murillo, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, & Robyn Schiff
Peter Gizzi
Thursday, September 11, 2008, 6:00 p.m.
Ferguson Theater, 600 South Michigan Avenue
Co-sponsored with the Poetry Foundation
PETER GIZZI is the author of four critically acclaimed books, including his most recent, The Outernationale. The editor of o•blék: a journal of language arts, he has also edited The Exact Change Yearbook, and The House That Jack Built: The Collected Lectures of Jack Spicer, and co-edited with Kevin Kilian my vocabulary did this to me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer. He is on the faculty at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and this fall is in residence at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
The Beat Generation Symposium
Joanne Kyger & Michael McClure, Keynote Readers
Film Row Cinema, 1104 South Wabash Avenue, 8th Floor
Co-sponsored with Columbia College's Provost's Office and Ellen Stone Belic Institute for the Study of Women and Gender in the Arts and Media, the Illinois State University English Department, and the Beat Studies Association.
Click here for more on the Beat Symposium, including registration information.
JOANNE KYGER, a native California writer, is the author of over 20 books of poetry. She is known for her ties to the poets of Black Mountain College, the San Francisco Renaissance, and the Beat Generation. Her most recent books are About Now: Collected Poems, 1957-2004 (National Poetry Foundation, 2007) and Not Veracruz (Libellum Press, 2007). She taught for many years at Naropa University’s poetics program, and The New College of San Francisco. She lives on the coast north of San Francisco. (Photo: Donald Guravich)
Saturday, October 11, 2008, 7:00 p.m.
MICHAEL McCLURE, one of the core group of Beat poets who gained fame in 1950s San Francisco, is also a playwright, journalist and memoirist. His life and writing reveal a deep interest in nature, ecology, and consciousness. McClure continues to live and work in San Francisco where he is more active than ever, writing and performing his poetry at festivals, as well as colleges and clubs across the country. Most recently McClure joined with composer Terry Riley to create a CD titled I Like Your Eyes Liberty. Recent books include Huge Dreams: San Francisco and Beat Poems, Rain Mirror, and Touching the Edge.
John Murillo, Aimee Nezhukumatathil & Robyn Schiff
Wednesday, November 5, 2008, 5:30 p.m.
Music Center Concert Hall, 1014 South Michigan Avenue
JOHN MURILLO is an Afro-Chicano poet and playwright and the 2007-08 Elma Stuckey Liberal Arts & Sciences Emerging Poet-in-Residence at Columbia College. A graduate of New York University’s MFA program in creative writing and a recent fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, his poetry has appeared in such publications as Ploughshares, Ninth Letter, Lumina, and the anthology DC Poets Against the War. He is a two time Larry Neal Writers’ Award winner, a former New York Times Poetry Fellow, and a Cave Canem alum.
AIMEE NEZHUKUMATATHIL is the author of At the Drive-In Volcano (Tupelo, 2007), winner of the Balcones Prize which honors an outstanding book of poetry, and Miracle Fruit (Tupelo, 2003), winner of the ForeWord Magazine Poetry Book of the Year and the Global Filipino Literary Award. A recipient of the Pushcart Prize, her poems have been anthologized in several collections, including Poetry 180, edited by Billy Collins, and Language for a New Century. She is associate professor of English at SUNY-Fredonia where she was awarded a Chancellor’s Medal of Excellence. [Photo: Marion Ettlinger]
ROBYN SCHIFF is the author of Revolver (2008) and Worth (2002), both published by the University of Iowa Press. She co-edits The Canary and Canarium Books, and is an associate professor at the University of Iowa, where she directs the undergraduate creative writing program.