Colgate professor and author Peter Balakian will host a poetry reading series throughout the spring semester. The readings, free and open to the public, will take place in the Robert Ho Lecture Room (105 Lawrence Hall).
On Feb. 5, the series will begin with a reading by Barbara Jordan. Jordan is an associate professor at the University of Rochester and the author of two books of poetry: Channel, which won the Barnard New Women Poet Prize, and Trace Elements. She has garnered poetry fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), Bread Loaf, and the Massachusetts Artists Foundation. Her poems also have appeared in The Paris Review, The Kenyon Review, Verse, and The Atlantic, among others.
Shao Wei will read on Thursday, Feb. 19. Wei was born and raised in the small mountain city of Wanxian, China, in the Sichuan Province near the Yangtze River. She came to the United States in 1996 and earned her master’s degree from New York University. Wei is the author of three books of poetry including Pulling a Dragon’s Teeth, Culture Bird: Looking for Myself in New York, and Nine Songs.Females.
Other poets reading in the series include John Poch, the first-ever Olive B. O’Connor Creative Writing Fellow in English (2000-2001), who will read Thursday, March 4, and Jennifer Kietzman, the current O’Connor Creative Writing Fellow in English, reading Tuesday, April 6.
Brooks Haxton will read Thursday, April 15. Born in Greenville, Miss., in 1950, he is the son of novelist Ellen Douglas and composer Kenneth Haxton. Haxton’s works include three collections of poetry, two book-length narrative poems, and two books of translations from ancient Greek. He has received fellowships from NEA, NEH, and a Guggenheim. Haxton teaches at Syracuse University and Warren Wilson College.
Balakian, author of the acclaimed The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America’s Response, and other books, is the Donald M. and Constance H. Rebar Chair in Humanities and professor of English.