Poet To Give Reading At W&L
Washington and Lee University will present a public reading with poet Erika Meitner at 5:30 p.m. on Oct. 29 in Northen Auditorium in Leyburn Library.
Meitner’s reading is sponsored by the Glasgow Endowment. Meitner will read from her new book, “Assembled Audience,” and copies of the book will be available to purchase.
“Assembled Audience,” which received a starred review from Publishers Weekly, is Me it ne r’s seventh poetry collection and explores what it means to be human in an increasingly precar ious world. The poems depict the act of people coming together — over meals, at the beach, in protest, prayer and celebration, as witnesses or through collective mourning — as not only a survival mechanism, but a form of resistance against the urgencies of our present moment.
“I’m really excited to bring Erika and her urgent, smart and wildly capacious poetry to campus,” said Lesley Wheeler, the Henry S. Fox Jr. Professor of English at W&L. “This new collection bears witness to so many of the crises assailing the world now — what one poem calls ‘the hard and dangerous work of having a body in the Anthropocene.’ She is truly, as Heather Christle writes, a significant American poet ‘at the top of her game.”
Meitner is a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin- Madison, where she also directs the MFA program.
As part of her visit to W&L, Meitner will visit two English classes, including Wheeler’s “Poetry and Authenticity” class, where she will discuss how she makes history, science, politics and other challenging subjects so vividly present to readers.
