The Woodberry Poetry Room invites you to Wax Poetics, a series that brings together our landmark AV collection with readings by contemporary poets. This season, Ilya Kaminsky will join us by honoring Jean Valentine, whose first-ever recording was made by the Poetry Room in 1965, the same year she won the Yale Younger Poets Award for her book Dream Barker.
 

The evening will begin with Kaminsky sharing selections from his own work and several poems by Jean Valentine. Then, we will move to the adjacent Poetry Room for an immersive, collective listening session and a joyful after-party and reception.

All are welcome to this intimate occasion, in which we celebrate the many ways in which we attend to and receive the works of others. 

In-Person Attendance:  Forum Room, Lamont Library, Harvard University.
A reception will take place in the Poetry Room afterwards. Free and open to the public.
 

Online Attendance: Livestreaming available via the WPR YouTube Channel.

ILYA KAMINSKY is the author of the widely acclaimed poetry collections Deaf Republic (Graywolf, 2019) and Dancing in Odessa (Tupelo Press, 2004), and the editor or co-editor of numerous anthologies, including The Ecco Anthology of International Literature (Ecco, 2010) and In the Shape of the Human Body I am Visiting the Earth: Poems from Far and Wide (McSweeney's, 2017). Together with Jean Valentine, he co-translated Dark Elderberry Branch: Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva (Alice James, 2012).

JEAN VALENTINE is the author of such collections as Door in the Mountain: New and Collected Poems, 1965–2003, which won the National Book Award, Shirt in Heaven (Copper Canyon, 2015), and Break the Glass (Copper Canyon, 2010). Light Me Down: The New and Collected Poems has recently been published by Alice James Books.

 

Please contact us with any questions about this event. We can be reached by email at poetryrm@fas.harvard.edu or via phone at (617) 495-2454. Persons with disabilities who would like to request accommodations or have questions about physical access may contact Houghton Library's Administrative Coordinator Le Huong Huynh by email or at 617-495-2443 in advance of the reading.