S289. The Gothic Pastoral: Poems from a Wrecked Eden

C124, Oregon Convention Center, Level 1
Saturday, March 30, 2019
4:30 pm to 5:45 pm

 

In keeping with Plath’s notion that “perfection is terrible,” Eden is at its most dynamic when it is punctured. The true pastoral is a stagnant ideal which comes alive when infiltrated with the mystery and the perversity of the gothic. Four women read poems that arise from this intersection, contextualizing landscape within a writing tradition that is increasingly obsessed with technology. Incorrigible speakers emerge from deteriorating, overlooked spaces where poetry is a dirty word.


Participants

Moderator:

Diane Seuss is the author of four collections of poetry: It Blows You Hollow, Wolf Lake, White Gown Blown Open, Four-Legged Girl (a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize), and Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl.

Jane Huffman has an MFA in poetry from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. Her poems have been published widely in print and online. She is the founder/editor-in-chief of Guesthouse, a literary journal, and works as a bookseller at Prairie Lights in Iowa City, IA.

Anne Cecelia Holmes is the author of The Jitters and three chapbooks, including Dead Year. Her poems have appeared in Gulf Coast, jubilat, Conduit, Denver Quarterly, and elsewhere. The recipient of a VCCA fellowship, she edits Jellyfish Magazine and lives in Washington, DC.

Adrian Blevins’s third full-length collection of poems, Appalachians Run Amok, is the recipient of the Wilder Prize from Two Sylvias Press and was published in 2018. Blevins is also the author of Live from the Homesick JamboreeThe Brass Girl Brouhaha, and other books.

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Kansas City Convention Center