Program on Poetry and Psychoanalysis
Poetry and psychoanalysis have in common a deep engagement with language-- its words and rhythms, its multi-levels of meaning, the ways that attention to it can give access to profound and unexpected experiences-- yet poets and psychoanalysts rarely enter into conversation about this shared engagement. A new program sponsored by the Outreach Program of the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute invites interested members of the public to sit in on conversations in which psychoanalysts who happen also to be poets talk to poets about their creative process and invite them to describe and reflect on their experience in writing some of their poems.
POETRY AND PSYCHOANALYSIS 2008 Season
Poets and psychoanalysts share a deep immersion in language, a fascination with human experience, and a conviction that to find the most live language for that experience makes life richer and more bearable. In this, our third series of Poetry and Psychoanalysis, we will again have three events. In each, a poet/psychoanalyst will interview a widely published guest poet about that poet's process and the making of some poems. The guest will read those poems to us and discuss them with the interviewer and the audience.
The program, which is free and open to the public, is offered through the Outreach Committee of the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis. Please join us. Our gatherings have been lively, fun, and informal, and have brought together groups who may rarely have had a chance to talk to and learn from each other. After each event, those who wish to do so may purchase books by the poet and have these signed.
April 6 devorah mahor
devorah major devorah major served as San Francisco's third Poet Laureate beginning in 2002. In addition to being a poet, she is a novelist and essayist. Trained as an actress and a dancer, she approaches poetry both as written and performance art. Her books of poetry include a two-poet anthology with Opal Palmer Adisa and street smarts (Curbstone, 1996), winner of the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Award. She is currently an adjunct professor at the California College of Arts and poet-in-residence at the San Francisco Fine Arts Museum.
May 4 Carol Snow
Carol Snow is the author of four books of poetry, Placed: Karesansui Poems (forthcoming from Counterpath Press), The Seventy Prepositions (2004), For (2000),
and Artist and Model, the latter a 1990 National Poetry Series Selection and winner of The Poetry Center Book Award. Among her other honors is a Pushcart Prize, an NEA Fellowship, and the Joseph Henry Jackson Award. Carol Snow will be interviewed by Susan Kolodny.
July 20 Al Young
Al Young is the current California Poet Laureate. Throughout his literary career, Young has been a poet, writer, teacher and lecturer; his latest published works include Something About the Blues: An Unlikely Collection of Poetry and Coastal Nights and Inland Afternoons: Poems 2001-2006. Young will be interviewed by Forrest Hamer.
Time:
Sundays, 4:00-5:30 p.m.
Location:
SAN FRANCISCO CENTER for PSYCHOANALYSIS
2340 Jackson Street, 4th Floor (entrance at Webster), San Francisco
We distribute copies of the poems to be discussed, so it is helpful to know in advance how many people will attend. To RSVP, please call the Center at (415) 563-5815.
Past Programs:
April 22, 2007 --
Poet and literary critic Alan Williamson interviewed by Susan Kolodny.
March 18, 2007 --
Poet, essayist and translator Lyn Hejinian interviewed by Forrest Hamer.
October 22, 2006 --
Poet and translator Dan Bellm, author of two books of poems, One Hand on the Wheel (Berkeley: Roundhouse Press/Heyday Books, l999) and Buried Treasure (Cleveland State University, l999), in conversation with Forrest Hamer.
September 10, 2006 --
Poet Paul Hoover, the author of Edge and Fold (Apogee Press, 2006), and Poems in Spanish (Omnidawn, 2005), which was nominated for the Bay Area Book Award. Paul Hoover is editor of the anthology Postmodern American Poetry and co-editor of the literary magazine, New American Writing. He is a translator, the author of a collection of literary essays, and Professor of Creative Writing at San Francisco State University. He will be introduced and interviewed by Alice Jones.
July 23, 2006 --
Poet Brenda Hillman, the author of seven books of poems published by Wesleyan Press, most recently Pieces of Air in the Epic (2005). Among her awards are Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, and the 2005 William Carlos Williams Prize for Poetry.
