Poet in The World: A Celebration of the Work of Denise Levertov

Peacework's Annual Pat Farren Lecture, October 24, 2007

Jimmy Santiago Baca learned to read and write in prison and sent three of his poems to Denise Levertov, who was then the poetry editor of Mother Jones. The poems were published and became part of Immigrants in Our Own Land the year he was released. Baca is the winner of the Pushcart Prize, the American Book Award, and many other honors. In 2005 he created Cedar Tree Inc., a nonprofit foundation that works to give people of all walks of life the opportunity to become educated and improve their lives. His most recent book is Spring Poems Along the Rio Grande (New Directions).

Kevin Bowen is the director of the William Joiner Center for the Study of War and Social Consequences at the University of Massachusetts Boston. He is the author of Eight True Maps of the West and co-editor, with Bruce Weigl, of Writing Between the Lines: An Anthology on War and Its Consequences and Mountain River: Vietnamese Poems from the Wars (both UMass Press).

Yarrow Cleaves is a poet, translator, and editor. She was Denise Levertov's secretary for four years in the late 1980s.

Martha Collins is the author of the book-length poem Blue Front (Graywolf, 2006), which focuses on a lynching her father witnessed when he was a child. She has also published four earlier collections of poems and two collections of co-translations of Vietnamese poetry.

Regie Gibson, winner of the 1998 National Poetry Slam competition, has performed, taught, and lectured at schools, universities, theaters, and various other venues on two continents and in seven countries. Regie and his work appear in the New Line Cinema film Love Jones, based largely on events in his life. He is the author of Storms Beneath the Skin (EM Press).

X. J. Kennedy is a poet, writer for children, and textbook author who lives in Lexington. When Denise Levertov taught at Tufts University (1972-78), he taught there too. He is the author, most recently, of In a Prominent Bar in Secaucus: New and Selected Poems (Johns Hopkins University Press).

Paul Lacey is Denise Levertov’s literary executor, and the editor of Denise Levertov: Selected Poems. He has also published several books and essays on Quakerism, education, and American poetry. A former professor of literature at Earlham College, he is now the clerk of the American Friends Service Committee’s Executive Board.

Tino Villanueva's Primera Causa / First Cause (1999) is a chapbook of ten poems on memory and writing. His Scene from the Movie GIANT (1993) won a 1994 American Book Award.

Return to the main page for the Pat Farren Lecture, 2007.