Acclaimed author D.A. Powell will feature in the 57th Annual Wallace Stevens Poetry Program in online events at UConn and the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts
Poet D.A. Powell, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, will present two online readings of his work hosted by UConn and the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts. He will appear with UConn students at 6:00 p.m. on Thursday March 31, and will offer a second reading at 1:00 pm on Tuesday April 5 hosted by the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts.
The UConn event on March 31 is free and open to the public. Links for registration will be posted online at the Wallace Stevens Poetry Program website: https://wallacestevens.uconn.edu/
Powell has been praised for both his gravity and his wit. As one critic wrote, “No accessible poet of his generation is half as original, and no poet as original is this accessible.” Powell’s early books Tea (1998), Lunch (2000), and Cocktails (2004) are often read as a trilogy on the AIDS epidemic. Powell’s fourth book, Chronic (2009), won the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His latest collection, Useless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys (2012), won the National Book Critics Circle Award for poetry. Fellow writer Carl Phillips describes Powell’s poems as “entirely of-the-moment…. Mr. Powell recognizes in the contemporary the latest manifestations of a much older tradition: namely, what it is to be human."
The Wallace Stevens Poetry Program at UConn began in 1964 with funding from The Hartford to honor modernist master poet Wallace Stevens, a former vice president of The Hartford. In the last half century, the program has brought a roster of the most important national and international poets to Connecticut. This year’s program is sponsored by The Hartford and organized by the English Department in UConn’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Additional support is provided by UConn’s Rainbow Center, Humanities Institute, Creative Writing Program, and English Department Speakers’ Fund. For more information, please visit our website at http://wallacestevens.uconn.edu/