The Boutelle-Day Poetry Center
Founded in 1997, The Boutelle-Day Poetry Center at Smith College has a core mission to bring poets of national and international stature to campus to inspire students and the Smith community. All events are free and open to the public. See the current season’s poets below, and to catch up on regular news and announcements, be sure to visit the Poetry in Action page.
Announcements
Support our Local Bookstore!
Most books written, translated or edited by our series readers can be found online at Northampton’s Broadside Books.
Our Annual Report 2019-20
If you’d like to learn more about the last year at the Poetry Center, please see our annual report.
“You May Notice Some Changes”
A call & response collaboration between Poetry Concentration students and Photo I students in spring 2020, “You May Notice Some Changes” explores life during the COVID-19 pandemic in their words and images.
Current Season
Due to COVID-19, all of our programming for spring 2021 will take place remotely and online. We have an incredible lineup of poets, however, and we really hope that friends of The Boutelle-Day Poetry Center and members of the Smith College community who are living in places all over the world will register and attend these online events.—Matt Donovan
All readings are at 7:30 p.m. Registration links can be found on each poet’s page.
February 23: Victoria Chang | March 9: Donika Kelly | March 23: Diane Seuss
April 6: Erika Meitner (with High School Prize winners) | April 20: Ilya Kaminsky
“The Poem I Wish I Had Read” Series
We’re excited to announce the launch of “The Poem I Wish I Had Read,” a video series in which acclaimed poets discuss and read a single poem that they wish they had encountered as a teenager. In each of these video testimonials, poets talk about who they were as high school students, why reading these poems would have been transformational for them, and how these works altered their sense of what a poem can be. Enjoy the following featured videos, and check out the full series on our YouTube channel.—Matt Donovan
Broadsides
The Boutelle-Day Poetry Center offers a series of fine letterpress broadsides signed by the poets and designed and illustrated by Barry Moser, printer to the college.
Contact
Fax: 413-585-3339
Email: poetryct@smith.edu
Director: Matt Donovan
Administrative Assistant:
Jennifer Blackburn
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