UB Sets Schedule For “Wednesdays At 4 Plus” Literary Series

By Mara McGinnis

Release Date: August 27, 1999 This content is archived.

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BUFFALO, N.Y. -- "Wednesdays at 4 PLUS," the bi-annual literary series presented by the Poetics Program at UB, has announced its Fall 1999 schedule of readings and performances. It will feature several notable American, French, Canadian and English poets, as well as faculty members from the program, which is in the Department of English in the UB College of Arts and Sciences.

The series will open Sept. 15 with a reading by English poet Bill Griffiths, who has published several books of poetry, cultural investigations and translations from Old English verse.

Griffiths most recently published a series of ghost stories set in the baroque world of English government. Some of his other publications include "Cycles," "Building: The New London Hospital," "Tract Against The Giants: Selected Poems" and a book on Anglo-Saxon magic.

"Wednesdays at 4 PLUS" is sponsored by the James H. McNulty Chair in English (Dennis Tedlock), the Samuel P. Capen Chair of Poetry and the Humanities (Robert Creeley) and the David Gray Chair of Poetry and Letters (Charles Bernstein), all in the UB Department of English; Susan Howe, UB English and poetics professor, and Robert Bertholf, curator of the Poetry and Rare Books Collection.

Susan Howe, UB professor of English who is a poet, essayist and literary critic of distinguished national reputation, will give a reading and book party Sept. 17, where she will read from her new work, "Pierce-Arrow," published by New Directions.

On Sept. 28, poet and critic Susan Stewart, Donald T. Regan Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, will speak on the five senses in relation to the history of the lyric. Stewart is the recipient of two grants in poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Pew Fellowship in the Arts, a Lila Wallace Individual Writer's Award and a MacArthur Fellowship.

French poet Dominique Fourcade, winner of the most prestigious prize for French poetry -- the Grand Prix National de Poésie -- will give a bilingual poetry reading Oct. 20 and a talk Oct. 21. His poetry is said to be recombinant, rather than representational; presenting spawning constellations of sensation, rather than pre-formed images or ideas. There are two English published translations of his poetry: "Xbo" and "Click Rose."

Lyn Hejinian, a nationally regarded language poet, essayist and translator from Berkeley, Calif., will visit UB Nov. 10-11 and will speak on "The Language of Inquiry." Her latest publications are "The Cold Of Poetry" and "A Border Comedy," forthcoming this fall.

Hejinian recently collaborated with director and editor Jacki Ochs to produce the experimental documentary film "Letters Not About Love," to be shown Dec. 1 in the Center for the Arts as part of the "Wednesdays at 4 PLUS" series. The film, produced in 1998 by the Human Arts Association, chronicles the extraordinary correspondence of Hejinian and Russian poet Arkadii Dragomoshchenko. Lili Taylor stars as the voice of Hejinian and Victor Nord reads Dragomoshchenko. The film, which has been widely acclaimed at many U.S. film festivals, won best documentary feature at the South by Southwest Film Festival, where it premiered in 1998 and was awarded the Golden Apple Award by the National Education Media Network.

Some other "Wednesdays at 4 PLUS" highlights will include appearances by Serbian fiction writer David Albahari; Jeff Derksen and Catriona Strang of the Vancouver Kootenay School of Writing; C.K. Williams, 1999 winner of the Academy Award in Literature by the American Academy of Arts and Letters; American poet and fiction writer Robert Kelly, and Enrique Sam Colop, a linguist, lawyer, poet and columnist who is a leader in the creation of a multilingual and multicultural democracy in Guatemala.

The complete "Wednesdays at 4 PLUS" Fall 1999 schedule can be accessed electronically at http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/poetics/calendar/fall99.html. All events are free and open to the public, except as noted.

The series is produced with the cooperation of the UB Center for the Arts, the Department of Media Study and Talking Leaves bookstore. Call (716) 645-3810 for more information.