Semana Poética VIII

October 25-29, 2009

Claudia Aburto Guzmán is an Associate Professor of Spanish at Bates College, Maine. She focuses on Latin American Literatures and Cultures, and the interface between artistic expression and humanitarian efforts at the Mexico-U.S. border. Her creative writing has been published by various Spanish language presses and journals in Latin America, the United States and Canada, and her photography and mixed media projects have been exhibited in Maine and the Tucson sector of the U.S. borderlands.

Eliza Cutler is in her junior year at Dickinson College, studying English, Poetry and Education. In the spring of 2009 she won the English Department's Moorehead-Timberlake Prize for her poetry. She will student teach in the fall of 2010 and hopes to teach English once she leaves Dickinson. Ellie plans to work closely with poetry in the future and has hopes of rejuvenating the poetic spirit in the youth of America. She is currently the Co-President of the Belles Lettres Literary Society at Dickinson College and the Co-Editor-In-Chief of the Dickinson Review.

Emeric de Monteynard  was born in 1956, he lives and works in Paris, but it is facing the sea in Normandy that he replenishes himself and assembles his words, aloud, so that they resound what they say. In 1992, he met Guillevic with whom he became profoundly linked. This friendship will mark his writing, but it is his French professor, a friend of Max Jacob, who will give him a taste for the particular touch of words.

Three of his collections were selected and by the National Center for the French Book. Aux Arbres penchés [To Bending Trees] published in Belgium and illustrated by the painter Xavier received the Amélie Murat Prize in 2008.

Nathalie Handal is an award-winning poet, playwright, and writer. She has lived in Europe, the United States, the Caribbean, Latin America and the Arab world. Her most recent books include: Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia & Beyond (W.W. Norton, 2008), co-editor, and the forthcoming poetry book, Love and Strange Horses (University of Pittsburgh Press). She has been involved either as a writer, director or producer in over twenty theatrical and/or film productions worldwide. She was a finalist for the 2009 A Room of Her Own's Freedom Award.

Isabel Pérez Montalbán was born in Cordoba (Spain) in 1964. She has lived in Malaga for more than twenty years. She studied Education and Audiovisual Communication. She works at the Association of Arquitechts of Malaga. She is one of the most outstanding representatives of poetry of conscience in Spain. She has participated in important literary festivals, such as Barcelona’s Poetry Week in 2007. She has published, among others, the collections Fuegos japoneses en la bahía

(1996), Cartas de amor de un comunista (1999), El frío proletario (2002), La autonomía térmica de los pingüinos (2005), and Animal ma non troppo (2008).

Lev Rubinstein Born in 1947 in Moscow, Lev Rubinstein worked as a librarian while he took part in the Russian literary underground, a job that at least partly inspired his use of the note card as poetic medium. Rubinstein's central importance to the Russian avant-garde, and his artistic affinities with international experimental poetry, make him an essential figure both to Russian and to world poetry; that he has been translated into German, French, Swedish, Polish, and English indicates the already-existing regard for his achievements. (Bio-note from the website BlazeVOX2k3, an online journal of new media/poetry/avant garde. http://www.geoffreygatza.com/arkv/2k3fl/index.htm)

The poems presented here are from Catalogue of Comedic Novelties: Selected Poems of Lev Rubinstein, translated by Philip Metres and Tatiana Tulchinsky, published by Ugly Duckling Presse in 2003.

Adrienne Su is Dickinson College’s Poet in Residence. She teaches poetry-writing workshops, contemporary American poetry, Writing about Food and Culture, and a hybrid literature-and-creative-writing course on the craft of poetry. Su is the author of three poetry collections, Middle Kingdom (1997), Sanctuary (2006), and Having None of It (2009). In 2007 she received a fellowship in poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts. In the summer of 2003, she was the resident poet at The Frost Place in Franconia, New Hampshire -- the house where Robert Frost wrote many of his early poems. Her work has been extensively anthologized and translated to Spanish and Chinese.

Andrew Zawacki is the author of three poetry books—Petals of Zero Petals of One (Talisman), Anabranch (Wesleyan), and By Reason of Breakings (Georgia)—and numerous chapbooks, including Georgia, co-winner of the 1913 Prize, and Masquerade, which received the Alice Fay DiCastagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America. His poems and criticism have appeared in The New Yorker, The Nation, The New Republic, Boston Review, Chicago Review, and elsewhere. Coeditor of Verse and of The Verse Book of Interviews, he edited Afterwards: Slovenian Writing 1945-1995 (White Pine). His translation of Sébastien Smirou, My Lorenzo, is forthcoming from Burning Deck.


Schedule of Events:

Sunday, October 25, Opening Nightand Reception
Bosler Hall Atrium, 7 p.m.  Free
Poetry Reading by:
Adrienne Su | USA

Monday, October 26
The Stern Center Great Room, 7 p.m.  Free
Poetry Readings by:
Nathalie Handal| Palestine
Emeric de Monteynard|France

Tuesday, October 27
Waidner Spahr Library, Stafford Reading Area, Noon, Free
Roundtable Discussion In Spanish Only

Tuesday, October 27
The Stern Center Great Room, 7 p.m.  Free
Poetry Readings by:
Andrew Zawacki | USA
Claudia Aburto Guzmán | Chile

Wednesday, October 28    
The Stern Center Great Room, 7 p.m.  Free
Poetry Readings by:
Lev Rubinstein | Russia
Isabel Pérez Montalbán | Spain

Thursday, October 29, Closing Night Reading and Reception
Bosler Hall Atrium, 7 p.m. Free
Poetry Readings by:
Each participating poet in Semana Poética VIII will read one poem
Closing poem by Dickinson Junior, Ellie Cutler I USA