Contemporary Poetry Colloquium

The Graduate Colloquium on Contemporary Poetry brings together practicing poets and scholars from Princeton and beyond in a series of events aimed at exploring poetry in the present moment. We sponsor readings that include a question and answer session where the audience is able to engage in a dialogue with the featured poet. In past years, we have hosted poets such as Charles Bernstein, Timothy Donnelly, Ben Lerner, Jean Valentine, Tracy K. Smith, Lisa Robertson, Eduardo Corral, and Rosanna Warren. We also organize events that bring the creative and critical arts together in a necessary dialogue, including roundtable discussions by poets and scholars focusing on topics and issues in contemporary poetry. These have included a discussion of ‘Poetry and Pedagogy,’ a roundtable on the work of New York School poet James Schuyler, and an upcoming symposium on conceptualism and poetic freedom. As a colloquium, we are committed to providing a yearlong series of readings and events that celebrate the poetry community at Princeton while sustaining a dialogue about poetry in the twenty-first century.

Upcoming Events

Contemporary Poetry Colloquium
Feb 5, 2025, 4:30 pm
 

Kamran Javadizadeh is an associate professor of English at Villanova University, where he works on the history of poetry and poetics, with a particular emphasis on the poetry of the 20th and 21st century United States. How does poetry emerge out of modern life, out of social relations, out of institutional arrangements?…

Location
Location TBA
Contemporary Poetry Colloquium
Apr 28, 2025, 4:30 pm

Tonya M. Foster is the author of A Swarm of Bees in High Court, and the bilingual chapbook La Grammaire des Os; A History of the Bitch (Sputnik and Fizzle, forthcoming 2020); and co-editor of Third Mind: Creative Writing through Visual Art. Her writing and research focus on…

Location
Location TBA

Past Events

Filters

Contemporary Poetry and Postcolonial Colloquium
Mar 1, 2024, 4:30 pm

Whereas the historical trauma of the Middle Passage and enslavement has been a prominent subject of Caribbeanist scholarship, there is surprisingly little sustained consideration of how poems and other imaginative works mourn this violent past, even though melancholic grief is a crucial component of the literary response to it. Building on…

Location
Chancellor Green 105
2023 - 2024
Contemporary Poetry Colloquium
Feb 29, 2024, 6:00 pm
CAConrad

CAConrad has worked with the ancient technologies of poetry and ritual since 1975. Their latest book is Listen to the Golden Boomerang Return (Wave Books / UK Penguin 2024). They received the Ruth Lily Poetry Prize, a PEN Josephine Miles Award, a Creative Capital grant, a Pew Fellowship, and a Lambda Award. The Book…

Location
McCosh 60
Speakers
2023 - 2024
Contemporary Poetry and Romanticists Colloquium
Nov 15, 2023, 4:30 pm

Maureen N. McLane is a poet, scholar, and critic whose work often arises from the conjunction of romanticism and/or now. She has published seven books of poetry: Same Life (FSG, 2008); World Enough (FSG, 2010); This Blue (FSG, 2014); Mz N: the serial (FSG, 2016); Some Say

Location
McCosh Hall, Room 60
2023 - 2024
CANCELED: Contemporary Poetry Colloquium
Apr 30, 2020, 4:30 pm

This event has been canceled.

Location
Speakers
2019-2020
CANCELED: Contemporary Poetry Colloquium
Apr 30, 2020, 12:00 pm

This event has been canceled.

Location
Speakers
2019-2020
Contemporary Poetry Colloquium
Oct 15, 2019, 7:00 pm

Poetry Reading

Co-sponsored with the 20th C. Colloquium, the Bain-Swiggett Lectureship in Poetry, the Fund for Canadian Studies, the Lewis Center for the Arts, and the University Center for Human Values.

Location
106 McCormick Hall
Speaker
2019-2020
Contemporary Poetry Colloquium
Oct 15, 2019, 12:00 pm

Thinking on the Edge of the Abyss

Co-sponsored with the 20th C. Colloquium, the Bain-Swiggett Lectureship in Poetry, the Fund for Canadian Studies, the Lewis Center for the Arts, and the University Center for Human Values.

Location
Hinds Library (Room B14), McCosh Hall
Speaker
2019-2020
Contemporary Poetry Colloquium
Apr 30, 2019, 12:00 pm

Roundtable Discussion:  Documentary Poetics

Co-sponsored with the Program in Asian American Studies, the Interdisciplinary Doctoral Program in the Humanities, and the University for Human Values.

Location
Hinds Library (Room B14), McCosh Hall
Speakers
2019-2020
Transcribir: Self-Translation in U.S. Latinx Poetry
Apr 10, 2019, 4:30 pm

Contact [email protected] for precirculated paper.

Co-sponsored by the Contemporary Poetry Colloquium

Location
40 McCosh Hall
Speaker
2018-2019
Contemporary Poetry Colloquium
Mar 25, 2019, 5:00 pm

A Reading by Anne Waldman

Location
Hinds Library (Room B14), McCosh Hall
Speaker
2018-2019
Contemporary Poetry Colloquium and Firestone Library Rare Books and Special Collections
Mar 25, 2019, 2:00 pm
  Anne Waldman, Making the Mimeograph Revolution   A conversation with the poet Anne Waldman about the books and magazines she wrote, edited, and published from the early 1960s to the present.  The event will include the opportunity to explore…
Location
Firestone Library, Rare Books and Special Collections
Speaker
2018-2019
Contemporary Poetry and 20th Century Colloquia
Nov 19, 2018, 4:30 pm

Alice Notley Reading

 

Affiliated Institution: 

Humanities Council

Location
40 McCosh Hall
Speaker
2018-2019
Contemporary Poetry Colloquium
Nov 14, 2018, 4:30 pm

Reading and Conversation with Joshua Beckman

Location
40 McCosh Hall
Speaker
2018-2019
Contemporary Poetry Colloquium
Oct 24, 2018, 12:00 pm

Poetry Reading with Dorothea Lasky

Location
40 McCosh Hall
Speaker
2018-2019
Contemporary Poetry Colloquium
Oct 1, 2018, 4:30 pm

A Reading with Tom Pickard

Location
Hinds Library (Room B14), McCosh Hall
Speaker
2018-2019
Americanist Colloquium and Contemporary Poetry Colloquium
Mar 6, 2018, 4:30 pm

Alchemy in African/American Poetry: Experimental Ekphrasis

Location
Hinds Library (Room B14), McCosh Hall
Speaker
2017-2018
Morgan Parker, poetry reading
Dec 14, 2017, 4:30 pm

Co-sponsored by the Contemporary Poetry Colloquium

Location
TBD
Speaker
2017-2018
Contemporary Poetry Colloquium and Department of English
Dec 14, 2017, 4:30 pm

Poetry Reading by Morgan Parker

Location
40 McCosh Hall
Speaker
2017-2018
Contemporary Poetry Colloquium and the 20th C. Colloquium
Nov 8, 2017, 4:30 pm

"To 'Whistle / in the Fasces of Uniform Graphemes': Babel After Fascism"

Reception in the Thorp Library to follow talk.

Location
Hinds Library (Room B14), McCosh Hall
Speaker
2017-2018
Contemporary Poetry Colloquium, Council of the Humanities, Department of English
Oct 11, 2017, 12:00 pm

Otters and Others: British and Irish Poetry

Location
Hinds Library (Room B14), McCosh Hall
Speaker
2017-2018