Poet Patrick Donnelly to Read at Smith College

Smith College will present a book launch and poetry reading by Patrick Donnelly at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, March 13, in Stoddard Hall Auditorium. The event is free and open to the public.

Donnelly’s poems, as described by The Boxcar Poetry Review, “shine a light in the darkest corners, and are infused with humor, humanity, and steely passion.” His ambitious first book, “The Charge,” is a nuanced and deeply affecting exploration of love, sexuality and grief in the age of AIDS.

This reading celebrates the publication of Donnelly’s long-awaited second collection, “Nocturnes of the Brothel of Ruin,” which is even more urgent and satisfying. Poet Chase Twitchell describes the new book as “an ambitious, winged re-imagining of the possibilities of voice … taking a large and adventurous leap—linguistically, emotionally, imaginatively.”

“Nocturnes of the Brothel of Ruin” includes translations from the 1,000-year-old Japanese imperial anthologies of poetry, which Donnelly translated with Stephen D. Miller. More translations will appear in “The Wind from Vulture Peak: The Buddhification of Japanese Waka in the Heian Period,” a scholarly history and analysis forthcoming from Cornell East Asia Series.

Donnelly is a 2008 recipient of an Artist Fellowship from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and a member of the Massachusetts Poetry Outreach Project Advisory Board. He received the Richard Soref Scholarship in Poetry in 2003 and the Margaret Bridgman Fellowship in Poetry in 2004 from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and grants from the PEN Fund for Writers in 2000 and 2001.

Director of the Advanced Seminar, one of three summer programs at The Frost Place, a poetry conference center at Robert Frost’s old homestead in Franconia, N.H., Donnelly has taught creative writing and public speaking at Colby College and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. He serves as an interdisciplinary advisor in poetry for the Lesley University MFA in Creative Writing Program and makes his home in South Deerfield, Mass., with his spouse, Stephen D. Miller.

Donnelly’s reading will be followed by a book sale and signing. For more information, contact Jennifer Blackburn in the Poetry Center office at (413) 585-4891.

For disability access information or to request accommodations, call (413) 585-2407. To request a sign language interpreter specifically, call (413) 585-2071 (voice or TTY) or e-mail ODS@smith.edu. All requests must be made at least 10 days prior to the event.