Matthew Olzmann and Vievee Francis presented by the Boutelle-Day Poetry Center

“Each poem is, symbolically, a star—and also, often, a letter, elegy, and ode,” Julie Marie Wade writes about Matthew Olzmann’s latest collection, Constellation Route (Alice James Books). Exploring social / political tensions and ruptures in reality, Matthew Olzmann reckons with radical wonder in this series of epistolary poems. A past recipient of the Kundiman Prize, Olzmann is a Senior Lecturer of Creative Writing at Dartmouth College and Poetry Editor for Hyphen Magazine.

Vievee Francis’ The Shared World (TriQuarterly Press) explores longing, love, and cruelty in a collection of work that undoes ecological / societal mythmaking by calling attention to the environments, masks, folklore, and histories we inherit. As Nomi Stone prefaces her interview with the poet, Francis “speak[s] of the Black female body … in a broken country that would otherwise un-speak it.” She has received the 2017 Kingsley Tufts Award and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. She currently teaches at Dartmouth College as an Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing.

Co-sponsored by the department of Africana Studies