The distinguished Northern Irish poet Michael Longley will read from his work on Wednesday, April 6, at 7 p.m., as part of the New York University Creative Writing Program Spring Reading Series. Co-sponsored with NYU’s Glucksman Ireland House, the reading takes place at the NYU Silver Center, Hemmerdinger Hall, 100 Washington Square East. It is free and open to the public; for further information call 212.998.8816.
The following evening, on Thursday, April 7, at 7 p.m., the literary critic Edna Longley will speak on “Altering the Past: Northern Irish Poetry and Modern Canons” at NYU’s Glucksman Ireland House, One Washington Mews (at Fifth Avenue). She will consider how the Northern Irish poetic phenomenon since the 1960s might force a re-evaluation of some of the ways in which Anglo-American criticism has conceived “modern poetry.” Longley is the author of Multiculturalism: The View from Two Irelands.
Michael Longley is the author of many books of poetry including No Continuing City, The Ghost Orchid, and The Weather in Japan. He has received many honors including the Whitbread Poetry Prize, the Irish Times Literature Prize, and the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry. John Burnside has called Michael Longley “one of the finest lyric poets of the century.”
The next event in the NYU Creative Writing Program Reading Series will be on Tuesday, April 19. Entitled “Africa and the World: The Writer’s Role,” the reading and discussion features Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, Breyten Breytenbach, and Uwe Timm, among others.
The NYU Creative Writing Program, with permanent faculty members E.L.Doctorow, Galway Kinnell, Paule Marshall, and Sharon Olds, has distinguished itself for over three decades as a leading national center for the study of literature and writing. The Creative Writing Program Director is Melissa Hammerle. The Reading Series, sponsored in cooperation with the NYU Book Centers and the Fales Collection at NYU, is a vital component of the Writing Program, bringing both established and new writers to NYU.
The NYU Creative Writing Program Reading Series is made possible by generous support from the Lila Acheson Wallace Theater Fund, established in The New York Community Trust by the founders of the Reader’s Digest Association. Additional support is provided by Robert E. Holmes.