The Blaney Lecture

The Blaney Lecture on contemporary poetry and poetics is offered annually by a prominent poet. Past lectures have been given by Elizabeth Alexander, Richard Blanco, Anne Carson, Carolyn Forché, Joy Harjo, Terrance Hayes, Jane Hirshfield, Susan Howe, Adrian Matejka, Sharon Olds, Alicia Ostriker, Claudia Rankine, and Patricia Smith.

On Thursday, May 29, at 4 p.m. PDT / 7 p.m. EDT, acclaimed poet Kaveh Akbar will deliver the 2025 Blaney Lecture, “Poetry and Spirituality."

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Interesting poetry awakens us, asks us to slow down our metabolization of language, to become aware of its materiality, how it enters into us. Sacred poetry, from antiquity to the present, teaches us to be comfortable sitting in mystery without trying to resolve it, to be skeptical of unqualified certitudes. In discussing poems across the centuries—from “Hymn to Inanna” to Szymborska—Akbar reminds us that language has history, density, complexity. Such poetry, Akbar says, becomes a potent antidote against an empire that would use “the raw overwhelm of meaningless language” to cudgel us into inaction.

Kaveh Akbar is the author of two poetry collections: Pilgrim Bell (Graywolf Press, 2021) and Calling a Wolf a Wolf (Alice James, 2017). He is also the editor of The Penguin Book of Spiritual Verse: 100 Poets on the Divine. Akbar's first novel, Martyr! (Knopf, 2024), was a New York Times Bestseller.

This virtual event is free to attend with registration. Closed captioning will be provided.

The Academy of American Poets' programs are made possible in part by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the New York State Council on the Arts, with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.