September 23, 2005

Faculty Poets Kick Off Fall 'New Writing Series'

By Inga Kiderra

The quarterly UCSD New Writing Series, featuring new and established writers reading selections from their latest work, kicks off its fall 2005 season on Oct. 12 with a book party and group reading.

The series will celebrate Southern California poetry and the publication of The PIP Anthology of World Poetry of the 20th Century, Vol. 5: Intersections: Innovative Poetry in Southern California, edited by Douglas Messerli, with a group reading by some of the anthologized authors.

The event will feature current and emeritus UCSD faculty, including Rae Armantrout, author of eight books of poems, most recently Up to Speed; poet, critic and performance artist David Antin, who has been writing poetry since 1955; poet and critic Michael Davidson; Jerome Rothenberg, an internationally known performance artist, critic and poet with more than sixty books of poetry; and poet and photographer Pasquale Verdicchio, who is also considered a leading translator of major Italian poets.

Poet Douglas Messerli (a.k.a. playwright Kier Peters) and several other Los Angeles-based artists will also read.

The New Writing Series will continue with poets Peter Gizzi and Elizabeth Willis on Oct. 19 and with poet and fiction writer Mark Wallace on Oct. 26.

Free and open to the public, all readings begin at 4:30 p.m. in the Performance Space of the Visual Arts Facility, just north of the Gilman Parking Structure, on the UCSD campus.

Phone for public information: (858) 534-4618.

To read more about the featured writers and for full series schedule, please see http://literature.ucsd.edu/news/currentevents/writingseries.html

The series is sponsored by UCSD’s Division of Arts & Humanities, Mandeville Special Collections Library, the Department of Literature and Muir Provost’s Humanities Fund.

Media Contact: Inga Kiderra, (858) 822-0661