October 24, 2012 Robert Wrigley, the author of five collections, writes poems that speak to daily concerns about family, aging, and the land we inhabit. Wrigley recently answered questions via email about his life in Idaho and his goals for poetry. As he explains, “poetry exists for three central reasons: to delight, to instruct, and to wound.” Robert Wrigley will give a free public reading on October 25 at 7 p.m. in Buttrick Hall room 101 at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. Click here for event details.

June 26, 2012 Memphis native Don Share, poet and senior editor of Poetry magazine, has recently released his third poetry collection. In Wishbone, Share energizes his well-crafted lines with wit and hard-wrestled emotional truths. Many of the poems in Wishbone reflect on the transient nature of life and our attempts to muddle our way through loss. As Share explains in an interview with Chapter 16, “We’re always using whatever strength we have to grasp things, to hold on, and sometimes to wave goodbye.”

November 11, 2011 Internationally acclaimed journalist, poet, and playwright Antjie Krog was born into a family of Afrikaner writers and grew up on a farm within a conservative Afrikaans-speaking community. She published her first book at age seventeen and since then has continued to write groundbreaking work about South African injustices. On November 15 and 16, she will give a lecture and a poetry reading in Memphis at Rhodes College. Both events are free and open to the public.