To what extent is spiritual commitment compatible or incompatible with a poetics variously described as innovative, experimental, or avant-garde? To frame it the opposite way, mustn’t any poetry of spirituality be, on some level, “experimental”? In this talk by poet G.C. Waldrep, we’ll explore some ways in which contemporary verse may construe the relationships between faith, practice, and poetic innovation.
G.C. Waldrep is the author of four poetry collections: Goldbeater's Skin (Colorado Prize, 2003), Disclamor (2007), Archicembalo (Dorset Prize, 2009), and most recently the collaborative Your Father on the Train of Ghosts (with John Gallaher, 2011). His work has appeared widely in journals, including Poetry, Ploughshares, APR, New American Writing, Boulevard, New England Review, Threepenny Review, Harper’s, and Tin House, as well as in The Best American Poetry 2010. He has received a Gertrude Stein Award for Innovative Writing, a Pushcart Prize, and a 2007 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Literature. His selected poems in German, Goldschlägerhaut: Ausgewählte Gedichte, is forthcoming from LuxBooks in Germany. He has co-edited two anthologies: with Ilya Kaminsky, an anthology of critical, creative, and personal responses to the life and work of Paul Celan (Homage to Celan, Marick Press), and with Joshua Corey, an anthology exploring the postmodern pastoral (The Arcadia Project, Ahsahta, 2012). Since 2007 he has lived in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, where he teaches at Bucknell University, edits the journal West Branch, and directs the Bucknell Seminar for Younger Poets. He also serves as Editor-at-Large for The Kenyon Review.
Read an excerpt by G.C. Waldrep here.