The Northampton Arts Council is proud to announce the
selection of Patrick Donnelly, poet, teacher, editor,
translator, and poetry conference director, as Poet Laureate of Northampton for
2015 – 2017, beginning in April 2015.
The Northampton Poet Laureate position is a two-year term
during which the poet will celebrate Northampton’s vibrant and diverse poetry
community through activities of interest to the chosen poet, and will educate
the public about the importance of poets and poetry to Northampton’s civic and
artistic life. The selection committee read poetry by various nominees,
discussed a wide range of qualities in all their work, and considered their
success in the larger poetry world. This year the selection committee chose a
poet who has long been active teaching public
speaking and performance skills for writers and young people. By
majority vote, Patrick Donnelly was
selected as the seventh Poet Laureate of Northampton. Past laureates include Martin
Espada, Janet Aalfs, Jack Gilbert, Lesléa
Newman, Lenelle Moïse, and Richard Michelson.
Patrick
Donnelly’s books of poetry are The Charge (Ausable Press, 2003, since 2009 part of Copper Canyon
Press) and Nocturnes of the Brothel of
Ruin (Four Way Books, 2012), the latter book a finalist for the Lambda
Literary Award. He is director of the Poetry Seminar at The Frost Place (Robert
Frost’s old homestead in Franconia, NH, now a center for poetry and the arts),
and an associate editor of Poetry
International. His poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Slate, Ploughshares, The Yale Review, The
Virginia Quarterly Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Massachusetts Review, and many other journals. Donnelly teaches
at Smith College, and has also taught at Colby College, the Lesley University
MFA Program, and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference.
With his spouse Stephen D. Miller, Donnelly translates
classical Japanese poetry and drama, including the Japanese poems in The Wind from Vulture Peak: The
Buddhification of Japanese Waka in
the Heian Period (Cornell East Asia Series, 2013). Donnelly and Miller’s
translations have appeared in many literary and translation journals, including
Circumference, Inquiring Mind, Kyoto Journal, Metamorphoses,
and Poetry International. In 2013,
Donnelly received a U.S./Japan Creative Artists Program award to fund a 3-month
residency in Japan during 2014.
Donnelly is a 2008 recipient of an Artist Fellowship from the
Massachusetts Cultural Council. His spiritual curiosity has led him, at
different times, to study for the Roman Catholic priesthood and to live as a
Buddhist and a Muslim, and his poems have interrogated narratives of same-sex
love and desire and the AIDS epidemic with lyric strategies. Gregory Orr wrote
about Donnelly’s first book that “…everything he writes is suffused with tenderness
and intelligence, lucidity and courage.”
Donnelly’s
projects as Poet Laureate will include:
v
Free workshops focusing on poetry as an oral art, fostering
public speaking skills for creative writers and young people
v
The “Choral Poem Project,” for poets, community members, and
young people, featuring performances of poetry by “choirs” of speakers
v
Events celebrating the vibrant community of literary
translators in Northampton
v
“Poetry and HIV,” a benefit reading in support of A Positive
Place (formerly AIDS Care Hampshire County)
The
inaugural reading for Mr. Donnelly will be scheduled in the autumn of 2015, at
a date to be announced. The event will be free and open to the
public. Donations will be accepted to further the work of the Poet Laureate.