Oct 17, 2019 Four poets will visit campus over the next three weeks as part of the Fall Visiting Poets Series at St. Bonaventure University.

 

Danielle Pafunda and Dale Martin Smith are coming Tuesday, Oct. 22, and Hannah Brooks-Motl and Dan Bevacqua visit Monday, Nov. 4.

Both readings begin at 5 p.m. in the Reilly Center Hall of Fame, with a reception to follow. They are free and open to the public.

Pafunda is the author of nine books of poetry: “Pretty Young Thing” (Soft Skull Press), “My Zorba” (Bloof Books), “Iatrogenic” (Noemi Press), “Natural History Rape Museum” (Bloof Books), “Manhater” (Dusie Press), “The Dead Girls Speak in Unison” (Bloof Books), “Beshrew” (Dusie Press), and “Spite” (forthcoming from Ahsahta Press).

She is also the author of one book of prose, “The Book of Scab” (Ricochet Editions). Her writing has appeared in a number of journals, anthologies, and projects, including Best American Poetry, the Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day, and Best American Experimental Writing. She sat two terms on the working board of directors of VIDA: Women in Literary Arts, and teaches at Rochester Institute of Technology.

Smith is the author of six books of poetry, including “American Rambler” (2000), “Black Stone” (2007), “Slow Poetry in America” (2014), and “Sons” (2017). In addition to writing poetry, Smith has published essays in Boston Review, Jacket and Jacket 2, Lambda Literary, Los Angeles Review of Books, Paideuma, and Poetry.

With the late Robert Bertholf, Smith recently edited “An Open Map: The Correspondence of Robert Duncan” and “Charles Olson and Imagining Persons: Robert Duncan’s Lectures on Charles Olson” (both 2017).

Other scholarship includes a monograph, “Poets Beyond the Barricade: Rhetoric, Citizenship, and Dissent after 1960” (2012), and contributions to scholarly volumes devoted to poetry and poetics, rhetorical theory, communication, public culture, and performance.

In the 1990s, Smith attended the New College of California, studying with poets Tom Clark, David Meltzer, Lyn Hejinian, Joanne Kyger, and Gloria Frym. In San Francisco, Smith met Hoa Nguyen, and together they edited 10 issues of the little magazine Skanky Possum from their home in Austin, Texas.

Smith directs the undergraduate program for the faculty of English at Ryerson University in Toronto.

Brooks-Motl is the author of the poetry collections “The New Years” (Rescue Press, 2014), “M” (Song Cave, 2015), and “Earth” (Song Cave, 2019). Her poems, essays, and scholarship have appeared in the Best American Experimental Writing, the Cambridge Literary Review, Modernism/modernity, and in edited collections, among other places.

She earned a master of fine arts from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and a doctorate at the University of Chicago, where she was poetry editor of the Chicago Review. She is an assistant editor at Lever Press and Amherst College Press.

Bevacqua was born in New Jersey and grew up in Vermont. He earned his master of fine arts from Columbia University’s School of the Arts. His short stories have been published in The Literary Review, Electric Literature, and The Best American Mystery Stories.

He is an assistant professor of English and Creative Writing at Western New England University. His first novel, “Molly Bit,” will be published by Simon and Schuster in February 2020.

The readings are sponsored by the Visiting Scholars Committee, Damietta Center for Multicultural Student Affairs, and the Department of English.

English professors Dr. Sara Nicholson and Dr. Kaplan Harris organized the series, which will continue in the spring semester with visits from poets Wendy Trevino, Trisha Low and Jennifer Moxley.

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About the University: The nation’s first Franciscan university, St. Bonaventure University is a community committed to transforming the lives of our students inside and outside the classroom, inspiring in them a lifelong commitment to service and citizenship. In 2019, St. Bonaventure was named the #1 regional university value in New York and #2 in the North by U.S. News and World Report.