Lauren RubensteinAlive: New and Selected Poems, a new volume of poetry by Elizabeth Willis, the Shapiro-Silverberg Professor of Creative Writing, professor of English, was recently published by New York Review Books. The book contains poems spanning more than 20 years. According to the publisher's website, with these poems, Willis "draws us into intricate patterns of thought and feeling. The intimate and civic address of these poems is laced with subterranean affinities among painters, botanists, politicians, witches and agitators. Coursing through this work is the clarity and resistance of a world that asks the poem to rise to this, to speak its fury." Willis is…
Olivia DrakeA poem by Elizabeth Willis, the Shapiro-Silverberg Professor of Creative Writing, professor of English, is published in the Jan. 12 edition of The New Yorker. Willis, a 2012-13 Guggenheim fellow, is the author of Alive: New and Selected Poems, which will be published this spring. She is an expert on 20th century American poetry and poetics, poetry and visual culture, 19th century poetry and poetics, modernism, post-modernism, poetry and political history and the prose poem. The published poem is titled "About the Author."
Mike SembosElizabeth Willis, professor of English, authored several poems recently: "Alive" is forthcoming in American Reader in 2014. "Ephemeral Stream" was posted on Poem-A-Day, Academy of American Poets online on Jan. 2, 2014. "Survey” was published in A Public Space No. 17 in 2013. "The Witch" is included in the forthcoming 100 Poems Your Teachers Don't Want You to Read anthology to be published by Penguin Putnam in 2015. "Watertown Is Ninety-Nine Percent Land" is included in the forthcoming Collected in One Fund Boston Benefit anthology to be published by Granary Books in 2014. "Oil and Water" included in the Oh Sandy!:…
Elizabeth Willis, the Shapiro-Silverberg Professor of Creative Writing, professor of English, recently presented several poetry readings and talks. She read poetry at Hobart & William Smith College on Feb. 28; Ithaca College, Feb. 25; Maison de la Poesie, Paris, Jan. 22; the University of Toulouse, Jan. 16; at "Oh Sandy!: A Remembrance," Industry City in Brooklyn, N.Y on Nov. 10, 2013; and at Naropa University, July 9, 2013. Willis spoke on "Everybody's Autodidacticism: American Poetry and the Democratic Ideal" at the Conference on "Modernist Revolutions: Paradigns of the New and Circulations of the Word in American Poetry" at the University of Toulouse Jan. 16-17; and on "Notes on…
Hannah Norman '16Elizabeth Willis, professor of English, Shapiro-Silverberg professor, was a part of a talk commemorating Joseph Cornell (1903-1972) at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, New York on Nov. 16. Cornell was an American artist, sculptor, and experimental filmmaker. He was also one of the pioneers of an art form known as assemblage, which involves compositions of various 2-D and 3-D objects. In this distinctive event, Willis joined other contemporary poets and filmmakers and shared poetry readings inspired by Cornell’s unique creations.
Magda Teter, Chair of Medieval Studies, Jeremy Zwelling Professor of Jewish Studies, professor of history, professor of feminist, gender and sexuality studies, and Elizabeth Willis, the Shapiro-Silverberg Professor of Creative Writing, professor of English, have been awarded 2012 fellowships by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. According to the Guggenheim Foundation, the prestigious academic honor is presented to scholars “who have already demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts.” This year, the 87th annual competition recognized 180 scholars, artists and scientists from across the U.S. and Canada. They were selected from a pool of…
Elizabeth Willis, the Shapiro-Silverberg Professor of Creative Writing, professor of English, is the recipient of the 2012 Winship/PEN New England award for her poetry book Address, published by Wesleyan University Press. The L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award was established by the Boston Globe in 1975 to honor long-time Boston Globe editor Laurence L. Winship. The awards celebrate best works of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction by New England authors. PEN (Poets/Playwrights, Essayists/Editors, Novelists) New England is an organization of published authors, aspiring writers, and all who love the written word. PEN aims to advance a culture of literature in New England and…
Elizabeth Willis, the Shapiro-Silverberg Associate Professor of Creative Writing, associate professor of English, is the author of a poetry collection titled Address, published by Wesleyan University Press in March 2011. According to Wesleyan UniversiyAddress draws readers into visible and invisible architectures, into acts of intimate and public address. These poems are concentrated, polyvocal, and sharply attentive to acts of representation; they take personally their politics and in the process reveal something about the way civic structures inhabit the imagination. Poisonous plants, witches, anthems, bees—beneath their surface, we glimpse the fragility of our founding, republican aspirations and witness a disintegrating landscape artfully…