Friday, May 13, 7:00PM
Bill Berkson and Cole Swensen
@ Corcoran College of Art and Design
Born in New York in 1939, Bill Berkson is a poet and critic who now lives in San Francisco. From 1984 to 2008 years he taught art history and literature at the San Francisco Art Institute. He is a corresponding editor for Art in America and a contributor to such other journals as Artforum, Aperture and artcritical.com. His most recent books include BILL, a words-and-images collaboration with Colter Jacobsen; Lady Air; Portrait and Dream: New & Selected Poems; Not an Exit with images by Léonie Guyer; and a new collection of his art writings, For the Ordinary Artist. He was the 2006 Distinguished Mellon Fellow at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and received the 2008 Goldie for Literature from the San Francisco Bay Guardian and the 2010 Balcones Prize for Poetry.
Cole Swensen is the author of 13 collections of poetry, most recently Greensward (Ugly Duckling, 2010) and Ours (U. of California, 2008), which was a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Award. Earlier collections include a finalist for the National Book Award and winners of the Iowa Poetry Prize, the San Francisco State Poetry Center Book Award, Sun & Moon's New American Writing Award, and the National Poetry Series. Co-editor of the 2009 Norton anthology American Hybrid, she has a collection of essays, Noise That Stays Noise, coming out from the U. of Michigan Press later this year. She translates from French, including works of poetry, prose, theater, and art criticism and edits La Presse, a nano-press dedicated to contemporary French experimental writing translated by (other) English-language poets; she also edited a dossier on contemporary French poetry coming out in the next issue of Aufgabe.
Cole Swensen is the author of 13 collections of poetry, most recently Greensward (Ugly Duckling, 2010) and Ours (U. of California, 2008), which was a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Award. Earlier collections include a finalist for the National Book Award and winners of the Iowa Poetry Prize, the San Francisco State Poetry Center Book Award, Sun & Moon's New American Writing Award, and the National Poetry Series. Co-editor of the 2009 Norton anthology American Hybrid, she has a collection of essays, Noise That Stays Noise, coming out from the U. of Michigan Press later this year. She translates from French, including works of poetry, prose, theater, and art criticism and edits La Presse, a nano-press dedicated to contemporary French experimental writing translated by (other) English-language poets; she also edited a dossier on contemporary French poetry coming out in the next issue of Aufgabe.