Name: Of Birds and Being: Five Poets from The Word Works
Start: 2023-05-05T13:00:00-0400
End: 2023-05-05T14:00:00-0400

The 2023 Massachusetts Poetry Festival

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Of Birds and Being: Five Poets from The Word Works

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Five poets whose collections have been published by the Washington, D.C.-based Word Works will read poems that explore the physical and metaphysical presence of birds. Their poems observe and describe different species, with their various behaviors, and consider birds as harbingers, emissaries, and omens, as figures of hope, grief, and eros. Poets include Jennifer Barber, Carrie Bennett, Nadia Colburn, Kevin McLellan, and Meg Kearney. Their diverse aesthetic outlooks, ranging from experimental methods to traditional lyric forms and blended narrative-lyrics, encompass the many ways in which the presence of birds informs our existence.

Speakers

Nadia Colburn

Poetry and Nonfiction Writer, Align Your Story

Nadia Colburn is the author of poetry book The HighShelf (The Word Works 2019), and her second book, I Say the Sky isforthcoming from the University Press of Kentucky's New Poetry and Prose series. Her writing has appeared in more than 80 publications, including The New Yorker, American... Read More →

Carrie Bennett

Boston University

Carrie Bennett is a Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellow and author of three poetry books— biography of water, The Land Is a Painted Thing, Lost Letters and Other Animals—and several chapbooks from dancing girl press. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals including... Read More →

Jennifer Barber

Jennifer Barber’s fourth poetry collection, The Sliding Boat Our Bodies Made, came out in 2022 from The Word Works. Her collection Works on Paper received the 2015 Tenth Gate Prize from The Word Works and was published in 2016. She is the current poet laureate of Brookline and the... Read More →

Kevin McLellan

Kevin McLellan is the author of: in other words you/ (selected by Timothy Liu for the 2022 Hilary Tham Capital Collection), Hemispheres (in the Poetry Center at the University of Arizona and other special collections), Ornitheology (2019 Massachusetts Book Awards recipient); [box] (in... Read More →

Meg Kearney

Meg Kearney’s All Morning the Crows—winner of the 2020 Washington Prize, a Pushcart Prize nominee, and Silver Medalist in Foreword Review’s Indies Book Awards— made Small Press Distribution’s poetry bestseller list April through September, 2021. Meg is author of a heroic... Read More →

Friday May 5, 2023 1:00pm - 2:00pm EDT
PEM Morse Auditorium

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