Occurring annually on or around the GVSU Pew Campus in Grand Rapids, GVSU Poetry Night has a tradition of bringing some of the most celebrated and distinguished poets to enlighten and entertain. One of the largest poetry reading series in the state thanks to the generosity of donors and the university, Poetry Night events are always free and open to the public. This year, as part of the GVSU Arts Celebration, we are excited to have Kimiko Hahn joining us for a poetry reading and conversation.

Kimiko Hahn

Poetry Reading & Conversation

Thursday, October 5, 2023
7:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.

Wealthy Theatre
1130 Wealthy Street SE
Grand Rapids, Michigan

Free and open to the public.

Kimiko Hahn is the author of ten books of poems, including: Foreign Bodies (W. W. Norton, 2020); Brain Fever (WWN, 2014), and Toxic Flora (WWN, 2010), all collections prompted by science; The Narrow Road to the Interior (WWN, 2006), a collection that takes its title from Basho’s famous poetic journal; The Unbearable Heart (Kaya, 1996), which received an American Book Award; Earshot (Hanging Loose Press, 1992), which was awarded the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Prize and an Association of Asian American Studies Literature Award. 

As part of Hahn’s service to the CUNY community, she initiated a Chapbook Festival that became an annual event co-sponsored by major literary organizations. Since then, she has added chapbooks to her list of publications: (Write it!): a collection of odes, Brittle Process, Brood, Ragged Evidence, A Field Guide to the Intractable, Boxes with Respect, The Cryptic Chamber, and Resplendent Slug. In 2017, she and Tamiko Beyer collaborated on the chapbook Dovetail. 

She takes pleasure in the challenges of collaboration: writing text for film including: Coal Fields, the 1985 experimental documentary by Bill Brand; Ain’t Nuthin’ but a She Thing a 1995 HBO special; and Everywhere at Once, a 2008 film based on Peter Lindbergh’s still photos and narrated by Jeanne Moreau. 

Hahn’s honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, PEN/Voelcker Award, Shelley Memorial Prize, a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writers’ Award as well as fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the N.Y. Foundation for the Arts. She has taught in graduate programs at the University of Houston and New York University. Hahn has also taught for literary organizations such as the Fine Arts Work Center, Cave Canem, and Kundiman. From 2016-2019, Hahn was President of the Board of Governors, Poetry Society of America. In 2023, she was named a Chancellor for the Academy of American Poets. 

She lives in New York where she is a distinguished professor in the MFA Program in Creative Writing & Literary Translation at Queens College, The City University of New York. You can find her online at www.kimikohahn.com.

For more information about this event, email the GVSU College of Liberal Arts & Sciences at [email protected].

 

Past Poetry Nights

2022/23: Juan Felipe Herrera

2021/22: Danez Smith, Marcel "Fable" Price, and Ericka "Kyd Kane" Thompson

2019: Ellen Bass and Kevin Young

2018: Carl Phillips and Ada Limón

2017: Jane Hirshfield and Dan Gerber

2016: Tracy K. Smith and Oliver de la Paz

2015: Kwame Dawes and Aimee Nezhukumatathil

2014: Mark Doty and Dorianne Laux

2013: Li-Young Lee and Pattiann Rogers

2012: Nikky Finney and B.H. Fairchild

2011: Ted Kooser and Terrance Hayes

2010: Carolyn Forché and Bob Hicok

2009: Tony Hoagland and Patricia Smith

2008: Paul Muldoon and Natasha Trethewey

2007: Gary Snyder and Stanley Plumly

2006: Sharon Olds and Sonia Sanchez

2005: C.K. Williams and Philip Levine

2004: Rita Dove and Charles Wright

2003: Jim Harrison, Galway Kinnell, and Dan Gerber

2002: Billy Collins, Robert Hass, and Naomi Shihab Nye

2000: Robert Pinsky