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

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

The 2007 event was entitled: Poet in the World: A Celebration of the Work of Denise Levertov

Wednesday, October 24, 2007, 7 pm (6 pm reception) and was held at Cambridge Friends Meetinghouse, 5 Longfellow Park (off Brattle St.)

Denise Levertov (1923-1997) was one of the defining voices of twentieth-century American poetry. She is claimed by many as a “peace poet” for her poems and speeches against the Vietnam war and nuclear weapons. But she also wrote poems exploring entirely personal themes, and “nature poems”; she explored the power and constraints of both marriage and life as a single woman; and, a late convert to Catholicism, she wrote many poems of religious exploration and experience. The many connections among these themes make each one richer.

The masterful subtlety of sense and sound in Denise Levertov’s poems means that even the simplest of them rewards re-reading, discussion, and especially hearing aloud. On October 24 (her birthday) we hosted an evening of readings from Denise Levertov’s work by eight diverse poets, who discussed how that work continues to move through the world – and to change it.

Jimmy Santiago Baca
Kevin Bowen
Yarrow Cleaves
Martha Collins
Regie Gibson
X.J. Kennedy
Tino Villanueva
Paul Lacey, editor of Denise Levertov: Selected Poems, gave an introduction.
Please learn more about these readers below.

Many of the 160 people who attended the event were close friends and associates of Denise Levertov's, some who knew her during her many years' residence in Somerville. There was a time at the end of the program for people to share their memories of her, and connections with her writing.

Grolier Books was on hand to sell books by Denise Levertov and by the reading poets.
To support this event, please make checks payable to AFSC-Peacework-Pat Faren Fund and mail to Peacework, AFSC, 2161 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge MA 02140. For more information call 617-661-6130 or email sburke@afsc.org.

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.