Attention Calendar Editors: See event-listing below.
Note to reporters and journalists: To arrange an interview with Adrienne Rich or to attend the class workshop, please contact the CSULA Public Affairs office in advance at (323) 343-3050.
Burden fete honors
‘poet, voice of social conscience’
at Cal State L.A. April 2
Los Angeles, CA – Considered one of the major American poets of the last half century, Adrienne Rich will be featured as this year’s Jean Burden Poetry Reader at California State University, Los Angeles on Wednesday, April 2, 6:30 p.m., in Cal State L.A.’s Golden Eagle Ballroom.
Rich will read some of her works and discuss her poetry, which has been described as “eloquent and visionary writings [that] have shaped the world of poetry as well as feminist and political thought.” Poet W.S. Merwin said her poetry represents “the makings of one of the authentic, unpredictable, urgent, essential voices of our time.”
Lauri Ramey, director of the CSULA Center for Contemporary Poetry and Poetics, said, “The reading celebrates Rich’s lifetime of achievements as a poet and voice of social conscience as well as the publication of her new and highly lauded poetry collection, Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth.” A reception and book-signing will follow the free reading.
Also, Rich will present a writing workshop to students in Cal State L.A.’s English 541 class, “Poetry as Difference,” from 6:10 – 7:10 p.m., on Tuesday, April 1.
Since receiving the Yale Younger Poets Award in 1951, at the age of 21, Rich has maintained a distinctive voice, with strength and conviction. Her poetry and prose are taught in literature, creative writing, cultural studies, women's studies, gender studies, and gay and lesbian studies courses across the country and abroad.
She is the author of more than 16 volumes of poetry as well as the prose book Of Woman Born. She has also authored five books of non-fiction prose; edited Muriel Rukeyser’s Selected Poems for the Library of America; and has published essays on the letters of Robert Duncan and Denise Levertov, on June Jordan and James Baldwin, and a preface to Manifesto: Three Classic Essays On How to Change the World. Her essay on “Poetry and Commitment” was published by Norton in spring 2007, in a small book. Her new book of poems is Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth (October 2007).
Her collection, The School Among the Ruins, received the National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2006 San Francisco Poetry Center Book Award. In 2006, Rich was awarded the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters by the National Book Foundation.
Among her many accolades are the 1999 Lannan Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award, an Academy of American Poets Fellowship, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Common Wealth Award in Literature, the National Book Award, and the MacArthur Fellowship.
This event is sponsored by the CSULA Center for Contemporary Poetry and Poetics, Department of English, and College of Arts and Letters.
Jean Burden Annual Poetry Series
This series, one of the longest running and most prestigious in the U.S., was established in 1986 by friends and supporters of Jean Burden to honor her achievements as a poet, essayist, editor, teacher and scholar. An Illinois native, University of Chicago alumna, and Altadena resident, Burden served as poetry editor of Yankee Magazine for 47 years, and published her poetry in prominent magazines including Poetry, Saturday Review, Prairie Schooner, Virginia Quarterly Review and American Scholar. She is the author of two poetry collections, Naked as the Glass (October House, 1963) and Taking Light from Each Other (University Press of Florida, 1992). Her poetry has been praised by figures such as James Dickey who called “[h]er voice unforced and lovely, saying the right un-heard-of-things with naturalness,” and Mary Oliver who described her poems as “silky, meditative, purposeful...filled with the deft cadences of reason.” Burden wrote six bestsellers on animal welfare, and an essay collection, Journey Toward Poetry (October House, 1966), lauded by May Sarton as “a key to a way of looking and a way of being.” The Jean Burden Series also honors and celebrates Jean Burden’s decades of commitment to sustaining poetry’s presence at Cal State L.A.
This increasingly popular event features an annual reading by a major poet. Noted poets, Pulitzer Prize winners and Poets Laureate have been guest readers since the inception of this series at Cal State L.A., including Andrew Motion, Rita Dove, Anthony Hecht, Maxine Kumin, Mary Oliver, Harryette Mullen, Lucille Clifton, Galway Kinnell, Carolyn Kizer, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Richard Wilbur, Linda Pastan, and Mark Strand.
The University is located at the Eastern Avenue exit, San Bernardino Freeway, at the interchange of the 10 and 710 Freeways. Public (permit dispensers) parking is available on the top level of Parking Structure C. Cost is $.50 per hour for parking. For more on the poetry reading, call Lauri Ramey, Cal State L.A. English Department, at (323) 343-4165.
CALENDAR LISTING
WHO & WHAT:
American poet, scholar, teacher, and critic Adrienne Rich is the featured speaker at
Cal State L.A.’s 23rd Annual Jean Burden Poetry Reading Series. A book-signing will follow the reading.
WHEN:
Wednesday, April 2, 6:30 p.m.
WHERE:
Cal State L.A.’s Golden Eagle Ballroom. The University is located at the Eastern Avenue
exit, San Bernardino Freeway, at the interchange of the 10 and 710 Freeways. Public (permit
dispensers) parking is available on the top level of Parking Structure C.
DETAILS:
Free to the public. For more information, go to http://www.calstatela.edu/academic/english/nrich.htm or contact Lauri Ramey at Lramey@calstatela.edu or (323) 343-4165.
Working for California since 1947: The 175-acre hilltop campus of California State University, Los Angeles is at the heart of a major metropolitan city, just five miles from Los Angeles’ civic and cultural center. More than 20,000 students and 200,000 alumni—with a wide variety of interests, ages and backgrounds—reflect the city’s dynamic mix of populations. Six colleges offer nationally recognized science, arts, business, criminal justice, engineering, nursing, education and humanities programs, among others, led by an award-winning faculty. Cal State L.A. is home to the critically-acclaimed Luckman Jazz Orchestra and to a unique university center for gifted students as young as 12. Among programs that provide exciting enrichment opportunities to students and community include an NEH- and Rockefeller-supported humanities center; a NASA-funded center for space research; and a growing forensic science program, housed in the Hertzberg-Davis Forensic Science Center. www.calstatela.edu
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