Bagley Wright Lecture Series: Douglas Kearney

Red Read: Depictions of Violence Put Down in Poem
Douglas Kearney has long written about the conflation between violence and entertainment in U.S. American culture, from badman folklore to postcards of lynching. Yet, the question that may haunt any writer is, what are the ethics of representing violence? How do poetic aestheticizations of brutality transform, reinscribe, or abet flesh and blood violence? Through a series of vignettes in which Kearney entangles his encounters with violence in writing and his own attempts to put it down on the page, the poet investigates what compels him about the subject.

The Bagley Wright Lecture Series on Poetry supports contemporary poets as they explore in-depth their own thinking on poetry and poetics, and give a series of lectures resulting from these investigations. Lectures are delivered publicly in partnership with institutions and organizations nationwide. Find out more about past, present, and future lecturers, and explore the archive at www.bagleywrightlectures.org.

Charlie Wright, Publisher of Wave Books, established the Bagley Wright Lecture Series on Poetry (BWLS) in memory of his late father, the businessman and philanthropist Bagley Wright.

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Douglas Kearney has published six collections, including Buck Studies (Fence Books, 2016), winner of the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Award, the CLMP Firecracker Award for Poetry, and California Book Award silver medalist (Poetry). M. NourbeSe Philip calls Kearney’s collection of libretti, Someone Took They Tongues. (Subito, 2016), “a seismic, polyphonic mash-up.” Kearney’s Mess and Mess and (Noemi Press, 2015), was a Small Press Distribution Handpicked Selection that Publisher’s Weekly called “an extraordinary book.” His newest collection, Sho (Wave, 2021) is forthcoming. His operas include Sucktion, Mordake, Crescent City, Sweet Land, and next year’s Comet / Poppea commissioned by AMOC (American Modern Opera Company). He has received a Whiting Writer’s Award, a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Cy Twombly Award for Poetry, residencies/fellowships from Cave Canem, The Rauschenberg Foundation, and others. Kearney teaches Creative Writing at the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities and lives in St. Paul with his family.