Calendar

Jan
22
Tue
Panel Discussion: Black Opera: History, Power, Engagement @ 2239 Lane Hall
Jan 22 @ 3:30 pm – 5:00 pm

Panel discussion on U-M Afroamerican and African studies professor Naomi André’s book, with André, RC and U-M women’s studies professor Abigail Stewart, and U-M musicology professor Gabriela Cruz.
3:30 p.m., 2239 Lane Hall, 204 S. State. Free. 764-9537

Jan
23
Wed
Poetry and the Written Word: Hannah Ensor, Suzi F. Garcia @ Crazy Wisdom
Jan 23 @ 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm
Featured Readers:
Hannah Ensor, a poet living in Ypsilanti, RC alum, and assistant director the Hopwood Program, has published on topics of pop culture, sports, and mass media. She co-wrote the chapbook, at the intersection of 3, and was associate editor of Bodies Built for Game, an anthology of contemporary sports literature. Love Dream With Television is her first book of poems.
Suzi F. Garcia is an editor at Noemi Press and a representative for the Latinx Caucus. She is also a CantoMundo Fellow and a Macondista. Her writing has been featured in or is forthcoming from the Offing, Vinyl, Barrelhouse Magazine, Fence Magazine, and more. She can be found at: www.suzifgarcia.com.
All writers welcome to read their own or other favorite poetry or short fiction afterward at open mic. Hosted by Joe Kelty, Ed Morin, and Dave Jibson
see our blog at Facebook/Crazy Wisdom Poetry Series.
Crazy Wisdomn Bookstore and Tea Room, 114 S. Main St. Free. 7346652757.info@crazywisdom.net www.crazywisdom.net

 

Jan
28
Mon
Sarah Messer, Kidder Smith, and Ikkyu: Transformation, Aesthetics, and Beauty @ Literati
Jan 28 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Transformation, Aesthetics, and Beauty: Translating Zen Master Ikkyu and Classical Chinese Poetry

Translators Sarah Messer and Kidder Smith will introduce Zen Master Ikkyu, an unconventional 14th century enlightened Zen Master who wrote poems in Classical Chinese, upended gender roles, and transformed the aesthetics of medieval Japan. They will also discuss how they translated Ikkyu’s poetry since Sarah didn’t know any Chinese at the start. All of us together will then translate a poem from Chinese into English, using the same method that Sarah and Kidder employed. We will conclude by enjoying some cheese from White Lotus Farms (where Sarah works), understanding that cheesemaking also involves transformation, aesthetics, mindfulness, and beauty.

RC alumna Sarah Messer is the author of four books, a hybrid history/memoir, Red House (Viking), a book of translations, Having Once Paused: Poems of Zen Master Ikkyu (University of Michigan Press) and two poetry books Bandit Letters (New Issues), and Dress Made of Mice (Black Lawrence Press). Messer co-founded One Pause Poetry and teaches Creative Writing at the RC and is a cheesemaker at White Lotus Farms. 

For many years Kidder Smith taught Chinese history at Bowdoin College in Maine, where he also chaired the Asian Studies Program.  He is the lead translator of Sun Tzu—the Art of War (Shambhala), and (with Sarah Messer), Having Once Paused: Poems of Zen Master Ikkyu (University of Michigan Press).

Jan
30
Wed
Hopwood Underclass Awards Ceremony: Natasha Trethewey @ Rackham Auditorium
Jan 30 @ 6:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Please join us as we celebrate the fall winners of the 2018-19 Hopwood Underclassmen awards, which includes RC writing students and U-M students taking RC writing classes.

Following the announcement of the awards, there will be a reading from former U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey and a light reception. Free to attend and open to all!

This event is presented in collaboration with the UM branch of Phi Beta Kappa.

Natasha Trethewey served two terms as the 19th Poet Laureate of the United States (2012-2014). She is the author of five collections of poetry, Monument (2018), which was longlisted for the 2018 National Book Award; Thrall (2012); Native Guard (2006), for which she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, Bellocq’s Ophelia (2002); and Domestic Work (2000) which was selected by Rita Dove as the winner of the inaugural Cave Canem Poetry Prize for the best first book by an African American poet and won both the 2001 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Book Prize and the 2001 Lillian Smith Award for Poetry. Her book of nonfiction, Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, appeared in 2010. She is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Beinecke Library at Yale, and the Bunting Fellowship Program of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard. At Northwestern University she is a Board of Trustees Professor of English in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. In 2012 she was named Poet Laureate of the State of Mississippi and and in 2013 she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Feb
5
Tue
RC Fireside Chat: Writing Life and Publishing @ East Quad Greene Lounge
Feb 5 @ 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm

Hosted by the RC Student Union, the event features RC creative writing head Laura Thomas, local author Michael Ferro, and LSA creative writing major Necko Fanning.

Feb
11
Mon
Reading: Café Shapiro @ Shapiro Undergraduate Library Lobby
Feb 11 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Feb. 11, 12, 18, 19, & 21.

U-M students, nominated by their instructors, read their poems and short stories. Today includes RC writing student Jenna Vallina. Light refreshments.
7-8:30 p.m., U-M Shapiro Undergrad Library Lobby, 919 South University. Free. 764-7493.

Feb
12
Tue
Reading: Café Shapiro @ Shapiro Undergraduate Library Lobby
Feb 12 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Feb. 11, 12, 18, 19, & 21.

U-M students, nominated by their instructors, read their poems and short stories. Today includes RC writing student Kelly Christensen. Light refreshments.
7-8:30 p.m., U-M Shapiro Undergrad Library Lobby, 919 South University. Free. 764-7493.

Feb
13
Wed
Stephen Ward: James Boggs at 100: A Legacy and Lineage of Radical Social Change in Detroit @ Literati
Feb 13 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

James and Grace Lee Boggs left a remarkable legacy through their shared activism, writing, and mentoring. To mark what would be James Boggs’s 100th birthday Spring 2019, the James and Grace Lee Boggs Center in Detroit revisits his writings and activism, exploring the ways his and Grace’s efforts to bring about revolutionary change continue through a powerful lineage of thought and activism in contemporary community work in Detroit.

Stephen Ward is a historian at the University of Michigan who teaches in the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies (DAAS) and the Residential College, and he is the faculty director of the Semester in Detroit program. He is also a board member of the James and Grace Lee Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership. He is the author of In Love and Struggle: The Revolutionary Lives of James and Grace Lee Boggs. 

$20. 7pm.

Feb
14
Thu
Caryl Churchill Festival: Drunk Enough To Say I Love You? And Here We Go @ Keene Theater, East Quad
Feb 14 @ 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm

Feb. 14, 16, 22, & 23 (different programs). U-M students and faculty perform staged readings of works by this acclaimed English playwright in honor of her 80th birthday. Today: The 2006 play Drunk Enough to Say I Love You?, an allegory about U.S. foreign policy and international relations told through the story of a relationship between 2 men. Here We Go (2015) is a 3-part meditation on death, beginning with a funeral and continuing into the afterlife.
7:30 p.m., East Quad Keene Theater, 701 East University. Free. 647-4354

Feb
16
Sat
Caryl Churchill Festival: Love and Information @ Keene Theater, East Quad
Feb 16 @ 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm

Feb. 14, 16, 22, & 23 (different programs). U-M students and faculty perform staged readings of works by this acclaimed English playwright in honor of her 80th birthday. Today: U-M drama students in 2 different Residential College drama classes direct and perform Love and Information, Churchill’s 2012 play about relationships in the digital age presented as an evolving mosaic of more than 50 fragmented and superficially unconnected scenes. The U-M theater department also performs Love and Information(see 21 Thursday listing).
7:30 p.m., Keene Theatre, East Quad, 701 East University. Free. 647-4354.

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