Poetry Stage
University of Southern California
Los Angeles, CA 90089
United States
Free and open to the public.
Poet Kathy Fagan (Sycamore, 2018) will read from her new collection on lost love, nature, and the process of recovery.
Kathy Fagan’s latest collection is Sycamore, a finalist for the 2018 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. She is also the author of the National Poetry Series selection The Raft, the Vassar Miller Prize winner Moving & St. Rage, The Charm, and Lip. Her work has appeared in The Paris Review, The Kenyon Review, Slate, FIELD, Narrative, The New Republic, The Nation, and Poetry, among other literary magazines, and is widely anthologized. Fagan was named Ohio Poet of the Year for 2017, and is the recipient of awards and fellowships from the Ingram Merrill Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, The Frost Place, Ohioana, Greater Columbus Arts Council, and the Ohio Arts Council. The Director of Creative Writing and the MFA Program at The Ohio State University, she is currently Professor of English, Poetry Editor of OSU Press, and Advisor to The Journal.
Kathy Fagan
Kathy Fagan is the author of Bad Hobby and Sycamore, a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Award, as well as four previous collections including The Charm, the National Poetry Series-winning The Raft, and Vassar Miller Prize-winner MOVING & ST RAGE. A former NEA fellow, she is currently the Director of Creative Writing and the MFA program at Ohio State University, and Poetry Editor for OSU Press.
The language of trees is the language of love and loss: in this collection, black walnuts fall where no one can eat or smell them, and cottonwood sends out feverish signals of pollen. And like the bark of the sycamore, which sheds to allow the tree’s expansion, these poems document both pain and tenuous rebirth.