MIDDLEBURY — Poet, University of Vermont professor and guest editor of “The Best American Poetry 2019,” Major Jackson presents this new published annual collection with featured poets Didi Jackson, Vievee Francis, Camille Guthrie and Jane Shore on Tuesday, Oct. 1, 6:30 p.m., at The Vermont Book Shop in Middlebury. The event is free and open to the public. A booksigning will follow Jackson’s talk.
Opening with a stirring essay on the transformative power of art in today’s tense times — and, in particular, the impact of accessible, daring verse — Jackson presents an illuminating collection of work by beloved and emerging poets, encompassing the beauty and diversity of contemporary American poetry in the 2019 edition of “The Best American Poetry.”
Jackson is the author of five books of poetry. A recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, Jackson has been awarded a Pushcart Prize, a Whiting Writers’ Award, and has been honored by the Pew Fellowship in the Arts. He has published poems and essays in American Poetry Review, The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, Paris Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, Tin House, and included in multiple volumes of Best American Poetry. He is the Richard A. Dennis Professor of English and University Distinguished Professor at the University of Vermont. And he serves as the Poetry Editor of The Harvard Review.
Joining Jackson will be fellow Vermont poets featured in this anthology: Didi Jackson, Vievee Francis, Camille Guthrie and Jane Shore. Didi Jackson is the author of the forthcoming “Moon Jar” and her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, New England Review, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. She currently teaches creative writing at the University of Vermont. Vievee Francis is a poet and professor at Dartmouth College and author of “Forest Primeval.” Camille Guthrie is a poet and Director of Undergraduate Writing Initiatives at Bennington College. Jane Shore is a poet who has edited Ploughshares, and her poems have been published in numerous magazines, including Poetry, The New Republic, and The Yale Review.
Come to Tuesday’s event to hear some great works of poetry by Vermont writers.