Though poetry is often considered, as poet William Wordsworth called it, “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings,” contemporary poetics have made a compelling case for the use of research in the poet’s work. Poet Nicky Beer, the College’s 2016 Mary Wood Fellow, will discuss this on April 12 at the Rose O’Neill Literary House. The talk, “Stunned into a Poem by a Fact:” A Craft Talk on Poetry and Research, starts at 4:30 p.m. and is free and open to the public.
Beer will address aesthetic, cultural, and political ramifications of incorporating scientific and historic research into poetry, and celebrate what poet Linda Bierds refers to as the phenomenon of being “stunned into writing a poem by a fact.” The author of two poetry collections, The Octopus Game and The Diminishing House, Beer won the 2010 Colorado Book Award for Poetry. She is an assistant professor at the University of Colorado Denver, where she also co-edits the literary journal Copper Nickel. She has been awarded a Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and a Ruth Lilly Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation. Her writing has been featured in Best American Poetry, The Washington Post, and Kenyon Review, among others.
As part of the Mary Wood Fellowship, Beer will be in-residence at Washington College April 11-13, 2016, when she will hold individual conferences with select female undergraduate creative writers, enabling them to work with and learn from a successful female writer. Eastern Shore author Mary Wood, whose support makes the fellowship possible, is a 1968 graduate of the College and a former member of its Board of Visitors and Governors.
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