Lunch Poems: Robert Hass
After hosting Lunch Poems for eight years, Robert Hass has finally been prevailed upon to read his own poems in the series. Former Poet Laureate of the U.S., Hass is a UC Berkeley professor who has made important contributions in poetry, criticism, and translation. His books of poetry are Sun Under Wood, Human Wishes, Praise, and Field Guide, the latter winner of the Yale Younger Poets Award. His critical essays are assembled in Twentieth Century Pleasures, and the poets he has translated includ
Lunch Poems: Myung Mi Kim
Born in Seoul, Korea, Myung Mi Kim travels to the root of language, connecting speech and culture in a rich web of immaculate phrases. Kim strips words to the bone, using fragments and white space to enhance her themes of dislocation and first language loss. She is the author of four books of poetry, including Under Flag, winner of the 1991 Multicultural Publishers Book Award, and Commons (2002).
Lunch Poems: Michael S. Harper
This is a rare West Coast appearance for Michael Harper, who teaches at Brown University. He has published over ten books of poetry, including Songlines in Michaeltree: New and Collected Poems from University of Illinois Press. His book Dear John, Dear Coltrane was nominated for the National Book Award, and was based partly on his friendship with the musician. Virginia Quarterly Review has written, "...he creates a language humming with emotion and ennobled by a deeply felt human dignity."
This
Lunch Poems: Michael Palmer
The recent recipient of the prestigious Academy of American Poets Wallace Stevens award for "outstanding and proven mastery in the art of poetry," Michael Palmer is regarded as "one of America's most important poets" by Harvard Review. The voice in his poems shifts between one of passive observation and active resistance, graceful and startling in its lyricism and quiet protest. A crucial figure in international poetic dialogue, Palmer has translated into English from Portuguese, Russian, and Fr
Lunch Poems: Mei-mei Berssenbrugge
Born in Beijing, China, but raised in Massachusetts, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge molds language with seemingly effortless beauty and grace that invites the reader on a journey between worlds. Among many other awards and distinctions, Berssenbrugge has received two NEA Fellowships and two American Book Awards. She has published three books of poetry, and Hiddenness, a collaboration with Richard Tuttle. Her selected poems, I Love Artists, is forthcoming from UC Press (April, 2006). She lives in New Mexi
Lunch Poems: Maxine Hong Kingston
Maxine Hong Kingston burst on the literary scene in 1976 with her book, The Woman Warrior. A UC Berkeley graduate and professor who retired at the end of 2003 after a distinguished teaching career, she has delighted audiences with books such as China Menand Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book. In recent years she has started to write more poetry, including To Be the Poet from Harvard University Press.
This event took place on February 5, 2004 in the Morrison Room of the Doe Library.
Lunch Poems: Lyn Hejinian
Lyn Hejinian is the author or co-author of 14 books of poetry, including most recently My Life in the Nineties and The Fatalist, as well as the award-winning My Life. Poetry Flash has described My Life as a work that has "real, almost hypnotic power, obvious intelligence, and [is] astonishingly beautiful." Hejinian teaches in the UCB English Department. Her critical writings were published in The Language of Inquiry from UC Press. She has been the editor of Tuumba Press and co-editor of Poetics
Lunch Poems: Luis Rodriguez
Luis Rodriguez has published eight books of poetry, memoir, and children's literature. His poetry, including Trochemoche, has won a Poetry Center Book Award, a PEN Josephine Miles Literary Award, and Foreword magazine's Silver Book Award. He is also widely known for his memoir of gang life, Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A., and for founding and directing Tia Chucha Press.
Lunch Poems: Li-Young Lee
Li-Young Lee's collections of poems include The City in Which I Love You and Book of My Nights. In his poetry he explores a range of subjects, from his family's immigrant experiences to the haunting meditations of his most recent work.
"His poems are made from his life with his life; his poems are earned. He dares to be simple. And he is surely among the finest young poets alive," writes the American Poetry Review. He lives in Illinois.
Lunch Poems: Lawrence Ferlinghetti
A prominent figure in the wide-open poetry movement of the 50s, Ferlinghetti gave voice to a generation that changed the face of poetry forever. Challenging the elite's definition of art and the artist's role, Ferlinghetti founded City Lights Bookstore, providing a meeting place for writers, artists, and intellectuals for over a half century. Ferlinghetti's A Coney Island of the Mind continues to be the most popular poetry book in the United States. His most recent work, Americus Book I was publ
Lunch Poems: Joanne Kyger
A prominent figure in California's poetry scene for decades, Joanne Kyger writes poetry influenced by her practice of Zen Buddhism and her ties to the poets of Black Mountain, the San Francisco Renaissance, and the Beat Generation. Her latest collection, About Now: Collected Poems is forthcoming from National Poetry Foundation. She frequently teaches at New College and the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics.
Lunch Poems: Jack Marshall
Born in Brooklyn to an Iraqi father and a Syrian mother, Jack Marshall explores the cultures and cities that shaped his artistic awakening. He is the author of Gorgeous Chaos: New and Selected Poems 1965-2001; Sesame (1993), winner of the PEN West Award and finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; and From Baghdad to Brooklyn (2005). He resides in the Bay Area.
Lunch Poems: Harryette Mullen
Harryette Mullen admits to being "licked all over by the English tongue." Her fifth poetry collection, Sleeping with the Dictionary, published by UC Press, was a finalist for the National Book Award and for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Poetry for its "gleeful pursuit of the ludic pleasure of word games." Her work combines the experimentation of the French OULIPO group with an American funk and political awareness. Mullen is associate professor of English and African American Studies at UC
Lunch Poems: Fall 2006 Kick-Off
SERIES KICK-OFF
Distinguished faculty and staff from a wide range of disciplines read and discuss a favorite poem. This year's participants include:
Ani Adhikari (Statistics)
Mary Catherine Birgeneau
Patrick Dillon (California Magazine)
Janette Hernandez (Education)
Davitt Moroney (Music)
Charlotte Rubens (Library)
Jonathan Poullard (Dean of Students)
Harsha Ram (Slavic Languages and Literature)
Clare You (Korean Sudies)
Lunch Poems: Fall 2003 Series Kick-off
A stellar range of campus figures read and discuss their favorite poems. This year's line-up:
* Nezar Alsayyad (Architecture, Middle Eastern Studies)
* John Berry (Native American Studies)
* Frederick Dolan (Rhetoric)
* Elizabeth Dupuis (Doe Library)
* Jocelyne Guilbault (Music)
* Ray Lifchez (Architecture)
* Martha Olney (Economics)
* Christos Papadimitriou (Computer Science)
* Pablo Spiller (Haas School of Business)
* Steve Tollefson (College Writing)
This event took place on Septe
Lunch Poems: Dunya Mikhail
Iraqi poet Dunya Mikhail immigrated to the United States in 1996 after increasing harassment over her poetry, which confronts war and exile with subversive depictions of suffering. In 2001 she was awarded the UN Human Rights Award for Freedom of Writing. The War Works Hard, won PEN?s Award for Poetry in Translation and was selected as one of New York Public Library?s twenty five best books of 2005.
Lunch Poems: David St. John
David St. John was widely praised and was a National Book Award finalist for Study for the World's Body. Recent books are The Red Leaves of Night from HarperPerennial and Prism from Arctos Press, and his newest, The Face, a book-length poem. His image-rich work muses on both ecstasy and loss. He has been awarded an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the O.B. Hardison prize from the Folger Shakespeare Library. He teaches at USC.
This event took place on April 1, 2004
Lunch Poems: Cornelius Eady
Cornelius Eady's poetry meets the world's absurdities head-on with his own deft paradoxes. His highly personal use of language never detracts from its hard-hitting content. Eady's seven books of poetry include The Autobiography of a Jukebox, and his latest, Brutal Imagination. He's won the Academy of American Poets' Lamont Prize and teaches creative writing at CCNY.
Lunch Poems: Al Young
California Poet Laureate Al Young has created a profound and enduring body of work that represents our time. Young's numerous publications in poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and for the stage and screen explore the American, human condition through the lens of the individual voice. Ray González writes that Young "paints a picture of who we are as a nation and how our complexity takes us beyond national borders as members of a global literary community." Originally born in Mississippi, Young reside
Fernando Botero's "Abu Ghraib" - A Conversation with the Artist
Fernando Botero, Artist
in conversation with
Robert Hass, Professor of English, UC Berkeley
Poet Laureate of the United States (1995-1997)
Fernando Botero, the most famous living Latin American artist, will display his Abu Ghraib paintings at the University of California, Berkeley. These 47 paintings and drawings belong to a long tradition of artistic statements against war and violence that include Goya's Caprichos and Picasso's Guernica.
Organized by the Center for Latin American Studies, th
