Athens, Ga. – The Georgia Review at the University of Georgia will present a reading by nationally-renowned poet Sandra Beasley Feb. 7 at 7 p.m. at Ciné, 234 West Hancock Ave. in downtown Athens. The reading, which is free and open to the public, is part of her tour on the statewide Georgia Poetry Circuit.
Beasley is the author of “I Was the Jukebox” (Norton, 2010), winner of the Barnard Women Poets Prize, and “Theories of Falling” (New Issues Poetry & Prose, 2008), winner of the New Issues Poetry Prize.
Honors for her work include the Lenoir-Rhyne University Writer-in-Residence position, the University of Mississippi Summer Poet-in-Residence position, a DCCAH Artist Fellowship, the Friends of Literature Prize from the Poetry Foundation, and the Maureen Egen Writers Exchange Award from Poets & Writers.
Her most recent book is “Don’t Kill the Birthday Girl: Tales from an Allergic Life” (Crown, 2011), a memoir and cultural history of food allergy. She lives in Washington, D.C.
The Georgia Poetry Circuit will also hold a reading with Steve Gehrke, April 2 at 7 p.m. at Ciné.
The Georgia Poetry Circuit, founded in 1985, is a consortium of 10 colleges and universities that annually brings three poets of national and international reputation to the member campuses, providing important access to the literary arts for Georgia residents across the state. The Georgia Review, the internationally prominent literary quarterly published from the University of Georgia since its inception in 1947, has been a supporter of the Circuit since its founding.
For more information, contact the offices of The Georgia Review at 706-542-3481, or see www.thegeorgiareview.com or the official website of the Georgia Poetry Circuit, http://www.berry.edu/gpc/.
An excerpt of Beasley’s poetry is provided:
The Piano Speaks
After Erik Satie
For an hour I forgot my fat self,
my neurotic innards, my addiction to alignment.
For an hour I forgot my fear of rain.
For an hour I was a salamander
shimmying through the kelp in search of shore,
and under his fingers the notes slid loose
from my belly in a long jellyrope of eggs
that took root in the mud. And what
would hatch, I did not know-
a lie. A waltz. An apostle of glass.
For an hour I stood on two legs
and ran. For an hour I panted and galloped.
For an hour I was a maple tree,
and under the summer of his fingers
the notes seeded and winged away
in the clutch of small, elegant helicopters.
Source: “Poetry” (July/August 2009)
