The renowned publisher, poet, and scholar Michael Schmidt will visit the campus on Tuesday January 26 at 18:00, at the Upper Level of the John S. Bailey Library, to deliver a lecture on poetry. He will also be holding a creative writing workshop for English majors onWednesday 27 at 15:00-16:00 at the Deree Center for the Arts Auditorium.
One kind of poetry expresses the poet, giving the reader a wealth of particulars. Another kind of poetry expresses the reader, eliciting his or her experiences by means of templates. In his lecture, Dr. Schmidt will start from a handful of poems by Philip Larkin, then range out into the wider world of poetry, ancient and modern, making a case for the kind of poetry in which the reader is creatively engaged.
Michael Schmidt, a Mexican-born literary historian, writer and editor, has taught at Manchester, Glasgow and Cambridge. In 1969, he established Carcanet Press and in 1974 he founded PN Review, a poetry journal, which he still manages. His books include Lives of the Poets (1999), The First Poets (2006) and The Novel: A Biography (2014) as well as collections of poems and two novels. His publishing list, now including Anvil Press, includes among the modern Greek poets, Seferis, Elytis, Gatsos, Vayenas and Katerina Anghelaki Rooke, and among the ancients the Homeric Hymns, Sappho, Palladas and Meleager.