JANUARY 14 — Dorothea Lasky leads a group discussion of Bhanu Kapil’s “What are the consequences of silence?”.

Dorothea Lasky has published several collections of poetry, Milk (2018), ROME (2014), Thunderbird (2012), Black Life (2010), and AWE (2007), as well as several chapbooks, including Snakes (2017) and Poetry Is Not a Project (2010). She is the editor of Essays (2021) and co-editor of Open the Door: How to Excite Young People About Poetry (2013). In 2019, she published Animal, a book of prose. Lasky’s poems have appeared in a number of prominent publications, including The New Yorker, Paris Review, and American Poetry Review. Lasky was awarded a Bagley Wright Fellowship in 2013, and currently, she is an associate professor of poetry at Columbia University, where she directs the poetry program.

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JANUARY 28 — Stephanie Burt leads a group discussion of Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt’s “The Palace-Burner”.

Stephanie (also Steph; formerly Stephen) Burt is a poet, literary critic, and professor. She has published four collections of poems: Advice from the Lights (2017), Belmont (2013), Parallel Play (2006), and Popular Music (1999). Burt's works of criticism include The Poem is You: 60 Contemporary American Poems and How to Read Them (2016); Close Calls with Nonsense: Reading New Poetry (2009), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; The Art of the Sonnet, written with David Mikics (2010); The Forms of Youth: 20th-Century Poetry and Adolescence (2007); Randall Jarrell on W.H. Auden (2005), with Hannah Brooks-Motl; and Randall Jarrell and His Age (2002). Burt has taught at Macalester College and is now Professor of English at Harvard University.

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FEBRUARY 11 — Tyrone Williams leads a discussion of Duriel E. Harris’ “What he thought belly down, when I was 8 years old”.

Tyrone Williams is the author of several chapbooks and books of poetry. He teaches on the English and RIGS (Race, Intersectionality, Gender) departments and Philosophy, Politics and the Public honor program at Xavier University in Cincinnati Ohio.

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FEBRUARY 25 — Major Jackson leads a group discussion of Derek Walcott’s “At the end of tis line there is an opening door”.

Major Jackson is the author of five books of poetry, including The Absurd Man (2020), Roll Deep (2015), Holding Company (2010), Hoops (2006) and Leaving Saturn (2002), which won the Cave Canem Poetry Prize for a first book of poems. His edited volumes include: Best American Poetry 2019, Renga for Obama, and Library of America’s Countee Cullen: Collected Poems. A recipient of fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, Major Jackson has been awarded a Pushcart Prize, a Whiting Writers’ Award, and has been honored by the Pew Fellowship in the Arts and the Witter Bynner Foundation in conjunction with the Library of Congress. He has published poems and essays in American Poetry Review, The New Yorker, Orion Magazine, Paris Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, Poetry London, and Zyzzva. Major Jackson lives in Nashville, Tennessee where he is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in the Humanities at Vanderbilt University. He serves as the Poetry Editor of The Harvard Review.

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MARCH 11 — Rae Armantrout leads a group discussion of “You, Part I” by Ron Silliman and “Ponderable” by Lyn Hejinian.

Rae Armantrout is the author of fifteen books of poems, including Conjure, a finalist for the PEN/Voelcker award, (Wesleyan, 2020), Wobble (2018), a finalist for the National Book Award, and Versed (2009) which won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2010. She is the current judge of the Yale Younger Poet award. Her work has appeared in many magazines and anthologies including The London Review of Books, The New Yorker, Conjunctions, The Paris Review, Bomb, The Brooklyn Rail, The New York Review of Books, Postmodern American Poetry: a Norton Anthology, and several editions of The Best American Poetry. Her latest book, Finalists, from Wesleyan, appears March of 2022. Armantrout is professor emerita at UC San Diego. She currently lives in Everett, WA.

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MARCH 18 — Rodrigo Toscano leads a group discussion of Bertolt Brecht’s “The Doubter”.

Rodrigo Toscano is a poet and essayist based in New Orleans. He is the author of ten books of poetry. His latest book is The Charm & The Dread (Fence Books, 2021). His previous books include In Range, Explosion Rocks Springfield, Deck of Deeds, Collapsible Poetics Theater (a National Poetry Series selection), To Leveling Swerve, Platform, Partisans, and The Disparities. His poetry has appeared in over 20 anthologies, including Best American Poetry and Best American Experimental Poetry (BAX). Toscano has received a New York State Fellowship in Poetry. He won the Edwin Markham 2019 prize for poetry. He works for the Labor Institute in conjunction with the United Steelworkers, the National Institute for Environmental Health Science, National Day Laborers Organizing Network educational / training projects that involve environmental and labor justice culture transformation. rodrigotoscano.com

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