Martha Rhodes' poetry is variously described as lucid, savage, haunting, and hilarious. Author of three collections, she is a master of tone and compression. Robert Pinsky declared her latest book, Mother Quiet, to be “abrupt, unsettling, artfully distorted, indelible.” Rhodes is the founding editor and Director of Four Way Books and teaches at Sarah Lawrence and the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.

Supported by the Program for the Study of Women and Gender

Valerie Gillies, the first woman Makar (Poet Laureate) of Edinburgh, writes poems that are beloved in Scotland, and beyond. She is the author of ten poetry collections, the most recent of which, The Spring Teller, explores the sacred wells and springs of Celtic history. As reported in The Scotsman newspaper, "Valerie Gillies writes like the wind and jinks like a hare in the fields of language."

Presented by the departments of English, Religion, and the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life

In six acclaimed collections of poetry, Chase Twichell manages to be both startling and meditative, exploring the nature of the human mind and the urgencies of our imperiled natural world with what Boston Review called “fierce psychic inquiry and tremendous lyrical gifts.” A major voice in contemporary poetry and longtime student of Zen Buddhism, Twichell is the founder of Ausable Press.

ADDITIONAL TWICHELL EVENT:
Thursday, March 4
Poetry Center
7:30 PM

Lecture: "Beyond Words: What Poetry and Zen Have in Common."


Chase Twichell’s week-long residency at Smith, featuring workshops, individual student conferences, and a craft lecture Thursday, March 4 (Poetry Center, 7:30 pm) is supported by a gift from Tammis Day (05).

Tracy K. Smith's Tracy K. Smith’s poems treat grief and loss, historical intersections with race and family, and the threshold between childhood and adulthood, prompting Yusef Komunyakaa to write, “Here’s a voice that can weave beauty and terror into one breath.” Joy Harjo has called her work “a true merging of the ancient roots of poetry with the language of an age of a different kind of sense.” Author of two collections, The Body’s Question and Duende, and recipient of many honors, Smith teaches creative writing at Princeton.

Supported by the Program for the Study of Women and Gender

Praised by the Irish Times for writing that is “subtle, elusive and tinged with erotic intensity,” Peggy O’Brien is the editor of the Wake Forest Book of Irish Women’s Poetry and a member of the English Department at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. To borrow one of her own phrases, her new collection, Frog Spotting, is an ‘adventure of the optic nerve.’

Presented by the Department of English Language & Literature

"A Life in Yiddish: Adventures of Translator-Poet"

Professor emeritus of English at SUNY, New Paltz, Richard Fein is the author of seven volumes of poetry, including Kafka's Ear, winner of the Maurice English Award. His latest book, With Everything We've Got: A Personal Anthology of Yiddish, is a collection of translations of Yiddish poetry from Eastern Europe, the Americas, and the Soviet Union that also includes original poems inspired by his favorite Yiddish poets. In addition, Fein has published a memoir of Yiddish (The Dance of Leah), translated the leading American Yiddish modernist poet Yankev Glatshteyn into English, and authored a critical study on Robert Lowell. He served as Fulbright Professor of American Literature at the University of Madras.

Presented by Jewish Studies

The most prolific Korean living writer, praised by Allen Ginsberg as "a magnificent poet,” Ko Un is a beloved cultural figure who has helped to shape contemporary literature. Ko Un’s remarkable life is reflected in the many lives his literary output embodies—peasant, village boy and student, army conscript, Sôn monk, schoolteacher, depressive, political activist arrested and imprisoned many times, and author of more than one hundred volumes of poetry, fiction, essays, translations, and drama. He is frequently mentioned as a potential candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

David McCann, Korea Foundation Professor of Korean Literature at Harvard University, will introduce Ko Un and give a short talk on his poetry in the context of Korean literature.

Supported by the Lecture Committee, the Ada Howe Kent Fund, the Department of East Asian Languages & Literatures, the Korean American Students of Smith, and the Daesan Foundation.