Acclaimed poets Wayne Koestenbaum, Sally Wen Mao, S*an D. Henry Smith, and Stacy Szymaszek share the poems they wrote for our Majolica Mania exhibition and the objects that informed their work.
This event will be held via Zoom. A link will be circulated to registrants the day before the event. ASL Access will be provided by ProBono ASL.
Meet the Poets!
S*an D. Henry-Smith is an artist and writer working primarily in poetry, photography, performance, and publishing, engaging Black experimentalisms and collaborative practices across (and against) discipline. As mouthfeel, they collaborate with Imani Elizabeth Jackson, meditating on Black food, ecology, and ephemeral practices. Henry-Smith’s debut collection of poems and photographs, Wild Peach, was published by Futurepoem in 2020 and shortlisted for the PEN Open Book Award. “in awe of geometry & mornings”, exhibited at White Columns, brought to scale photographs from the book alongside a series of readings and conversations programmed with their collaborators. They are also the director of Lunar New Year, their first film.
Wayne Koestenbaum—poet, critic, novelist, artist, performer—has published 21 books, including The Cheerful Scapegoat, Figure It Out, Camp Marmalade, My 1980s & Other Essays, The Anatomy of Harpo Marx, Humiliation, Hotel Theory, Circus, Andy Warhol, Jackie Under My Skin, and The Queen’s Throat (nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award). His next book, Ultramarine, the third volume of his trance trilogy, will be published by Nightboat in February 2021. In 2020 he received an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature. Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library acquired his literary archive in 2019. He is a Distinguished Professor of English, French, and Comparative Literature at the City University of New York Graduate Center.
Sally Wen Mao is the author of two collections of poetry, Oculus (Graywolf Press, 2019), a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and Mad Honey Symposium (Alice James Books, 2014). The recipient of a Pushcart Prize and an NEA fellowship, she was recently a Cullman Fellow at the New York Public Library, a Jenny McKean Moore Writer-in-Washington at the George Washington University, and a Shearing Fellow at the Black Mountain Institute. Her poetry and prose have appeared in The Best American Poetry, The Paris Review, Poetry, Harpers Bazaar, The Kenyon Review, Guernica, and A Public Space, among others.
Stacy Szymaszek is the author of the books Emptied of All Ships (2005), Hyperglossia (2009), hart island (2015), Journal of Ugly Sites and Other Journals (2016), which won the Ottoline Prize from Fence Books and was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award in 2017, and A Year From Today (2018). Her sixth book, Famous Hermits, will be published this year by Archway Editions. Szymaszek was the Director of The Poetry Project from 2007-2018. She was the Hugo Visiting Writer at the University of Montana-Missoula 2018-19, Poet-in-Resident at Brown University, and Visiting Poet for the Fire Island Artist Residency. She has been a mentor for the Queer Art Mentorship and The Poetry Project, visiting faculty for Naropa University’s Summer Writing Program, and workshop teacher for Woodland Pattern, The Poetry Project, and Wendy’s Subway. With her partner, the poet Kimberly Alidio, she lives in New York’s Upper Hudson Valley on the sacred homelands of the Munsee and Muhheaconneok people, who, due to forced removal, reside in Northeast Wisconsin as the Stockbridge-Munsee Community.
