Richard Blanco brings a poet’s keen eye for observation and a prose writer’s gift for plot to his new memoir, The Prince of los Cocuyos, which illustrates how cultural, sexual, and artistic sensibilities are “all developed—not independently of each other—but simultaneously.” Blanco will appear at Vanderbilt University in Nashville on March 15 at 7 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.
Good news for Vanderbilt undergraduates Ariana Yeatts-Lonske and Marissa Davis, and for Belmont undergraduate Lagnajita Mukhopadhyay suggests the future is bright for poetry in Tennessee
Mark Jarman’s eleventh poetry collection, The Heronry, contains his central themes of spirituality and nature, his characteristic fondness for abiding in the mystery of ordinary experience, and his quietly fierce moral sense, all conveyed in language that is at once simple and cerebral. Jarman will discuss The Heronry in Buttrick Hall Room 102 on the campus of Vanderbilt University in Nashville on February 23 at 7 p.m.
Both poet and playwright, Linda Parsons is an editor at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. Her poetry has appeared in The Georgia Review, Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, Southern Poetry Review, Asheville Poetry Review, and Shenandoah. This Shaky Earth is her fourth poetry collection. Her play Under the Esso Moon was selected for the Tennessee Stage Company’s 2016 New Play Festival and will receive a staged reading in 2017.
Visibility at Zero is Austin Kodra’s first full-length poetry collection. He received his M.F.A. from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, where he served as an editorial assistant for Crab Orchard Review. His poetry and fiction have been published in The Adroit Journal, Superstition Review, Valparaiso Fiction Review, and elsewhere. Kodra lives in Knoxville. He will discuss Visibility at Zero at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville on January 30 at 7 p.m.
Acclaimed poet Joy Harjo’s most recent collection, Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings, delivers the exquisite mix of beauty, transcendence, and pain her work is known for. Harjo joined the creative-writing faculty at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville this year and will give a free public reading at UT’s Hodges Library on January 23 at 7 p.m.
