Event Description:
Walt Whitman Birthplace Association (WWBA) announces a day of poetry featuring our 2024 Poet in Residence Linda Gregerson on Saturday, May 4, 2024
Linda will facilitate a three-hour Master Class in poetry writing and a one-hour poetry reading at the Walt Whitman Birthplace State Historic Site, located at 246 Old Walt Whitman Road, Huntington Station, NY, 11746.
Master Class Lead by Linda Gregerson
ECOPOETICS: TEMPORALITY AND THE NATURAL WORLD
It is the premise of ecology in general and ecopoetics in particular, of course, that we live neither “in” nature or “with” nature but as an indissoluble part of nature. And yet, our distinctive capacities for doing harm, like our distinctive responsibility for stewardship, point to the profound paradox of “being human.” Nowhere do we experience this paradox more vividly than in the realm of time. For the most part, we experience time on a human scale: the heartbeat, the cycle of sleep and waking, our individually allotted time on earth. But what is our lifespan compared to that of the mayfly? Of the giant sequoia? What insights do we gain from such differentials of temporal scale? What terrors do we encounter when we contemplate such differentials? What sources of comfort or consolation?
I’ll bring in some poems for us to discuss, and I’ll ask you each to bring in one of your own: any poem that involves an encounter with nature will be welcome. We’ll also spend a portion of this workshop generating ideas for future poems and ecopoetical projects.
This class and reading will take place on May 4, 2024 in person at Walt Whitman State Historic Site
Master Class: 1:00PM – 4:00PM | Poetry Reading: 5:00PM – 6:00PM
Workshop: Members $55/Non-members $65
Class Audit: Members $20/Non-members $25
Reading: Members $10/Non-members $15
To purchase tickets visit: https://www.waltwhitman.org/product/kwame-dawes-workshop/
Linda Gregerson is the author of seven books of poetry, most recently of Canopy (Ecco/HarperCollins 2022). Her second collection (The Woman Who Died in Her Sleep, Houghton Mifflin 1996) was a finalist for the Lenore Marshall Prize; her third (Waterborne, Houghton Mifflin 2002) won the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Prize; her fourth (Magnetic North, Houghton Mifflin 2007) was a finalist for the National Book Award. She has also published two critical monographs and numerous essays on early modern English and contemporary American poetry. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, London Review of Books, Poetry Review, and a host of other literary journals. Among her honors are awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Poetry Society of America and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Humanities Center, the Guggenheim, Rockefeller, and Mellon Foundations, and the Institute for Advanced Study. A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and former Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, Gregerson is the Caroline Walker Bynum Distinguished University Professor at the University of Michigan, where she directs the Helen Zell Writers’ Program. She divides her time between Ann Arbor, Michigan, and London.
Supported by: New York State Parks, Suffolk County, & The Claire Friedlander Family Foundation.
This program is made possible with funds from the Statewide Community Regrant Program, a regrant program of the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, and administered by The Huntington Arts Council.
