Emily Dickinson Birthday Tribute: Aracelis Girmay (2011)

For the O.B. Hardison Poetry Series 2011's Emily Dickinson Birthday Tribute, Aracelis Girmay read from her own work and from Dickinson's in the Folger's Elizabethan Theatre on December 5th. The event whose co-sponsored by the Poetry Society of America; Executive Director Alice Quinn introduced Girmay and moderated the conversation. A reception with Emily Dickinson's black cake followed.

Aracelis Girmay

Girmay is the author of the collage-based picture book changing, changing. Her first book of poems, Teeth, was nominated for a Connecticut Book Award. Most recently, her poetry collection Kingdom Animalia was awarded the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award. She has served as the visiting writer in the MFA program at Queens College, and she is on the faculty of Drew University's low-residency MFA program in Poetry. She is also an assistant professor of poetry at Hampshire College, where her office is in the Emily Dickinson Hall.

Excerpts

From "The Piano"*

The hole in my heart is so big, room enough for the sky to pass through holding Jupiter’s hand. I can fill it with a mountain. I can fill it with a name. So perfect & used-up & broken.