Some very fine news just landed in our inbox: Derek Walcott, the Saint Lucia–born poet who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992, will be giving the keynote lecture at a symposium at El Museo del Barrio on the evening of Oct. 11. His lecture is titled “A Part of the Continent, from John Donne” and will be followed by a theatrical reading of his 1970 play Dream on Monkey Mountain. Read More
On July 21, the literary journal Abe’s Penny will host a poetry reading at SculptureCenter inspired by Bill Bollinger’s work in the retrospective currently on view there (recently reviewed by Observer critic Maika Pollack). Anna Knoebel, Abe’s Penny‘s co-founder, “sought poets who deal with form and reference material,” according to a press release. Read More
The Museum of Modern Art is turning out to be quite the poetry patron these days. First, as part of its “Ecstatic Alphabets/Heaps of Language” exhibition, MoMA installed John Giorno’s 1969 piece, Dial-a-Poem, in which a telephone plays back recordings of poets reading from their work (it’s also available on their website). Now, the museum is celebrating its former employee, one of the great poets of the 20th century, Frank O’Hara, who worked as an assistant curator at MoMA’s department of painting and sculpture and wrote many canonical works during his lunch breaks. Read More
As part of the Museum of Modern Art’s “Ecstatic Alphabets/Heaps of Language” exhibition (reviewed here by The Observer), MoMA has installed Dial-a-Poem, first created by John Giorno in 1969, which features poets reading from their work. Read More
