Athens, Ga. – Noted poet and MacArthur Foundation “Genius Award” recipient A.E. Stallings will visit her alma mater-the University of Georgia-for a poetry reading and a series of public events on March 25 and 26.
Stallings, who received a bachelor’s degree in Latin from the UGA Franklin College of Arts and Sciences in 1990, is the author of the poetry collections Archaic Smile (University of Evansville Press, 1999) and Hapax (Triquarterly, 2006). She also has published a verse translation of Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura (The Nature of Things, Penguin Classics, 2007) and is the recipient of numerous awards for her work. In 2011, Stallings was one of 22 people worldwide selected as a MacArthur Fellow by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The fellowship is often referred to as the “genius award” and comes with an unrestricted stipend of $500,000.
Stallings will deliver a poetry reading on March 25 at 7:30 p.m. at Ciné located at 234 West Hancock Ave. She’ll be joined by Coleman Barks, a retired UGA English professor who is internationally known for his translations of the Persian poet Rumi, and doctoral student Ida Stewart, whose book GLOSS won the 2011 Perugia Press Prize for a First or Second Book by a Woman.
On March 26, Stallings will participate in a roundtable discussion on the poetics of translation titled “Such as Centaurs: Poetry and Translation” at 11 a.m. in room 214 of the Miller Learning Center. At 1 p.m., she will be honored at a lunch open to the public in the reading room of the Miller Learning Center. At 2:30 p.m., she will deliver a keynote presentation in the Chapel, followed by a reception in Demosthenian Hall.
“In her poetry, Alicia mines the work of the classical poets and traditional poetic techniques and forms-like the sonnet, couplet and sapphics-to deliver startling and emotionally compelling insights about contemporary life,” said Naomi Norman, head of the Franklin College’s department of classics. “We are thrilled to have her back on campus for what will be an exciting opportunity to hear her, Coleman Barks and Ida Stewart read their poetry. I’m sure her visit will encourage us to think about poetry in a wider context.”
Stallings is originally from Decatur and came to UGA as an Honors student on a Foundation Fellowship, the university’s foremost undergraduate scholarship that offers extensive opportunities for international travel. She later received her master’s degree at Oxford University in England and now lives in Athens, Greece, where she serves as director of the poetry program at the Athens Centre.
Stallings’ poetry and essays have appeared in publications such as Poetry, The Atlantic Monthly, The Hudson Review and the Yale Review in addition to The Best American Poetry anthologies of 1994 and 2000. She has been awarded a Pushcart Prize, the Eunice Tietjens Prize, the 2004 Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award and the James Dickey Prize. In 2010, she was awarded the Willis Barnstone Translation Prize and in 2011 won a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her debut poetry collection, Archaic Smile, received the 1999 Richard Wilbur Award and was a finalist for both the Yale Younger Poets Series and the Walt Whitman Award. Hapax was awarded the 2008 Poets’ Prize.