Spring Break
Authors present poems, excerpts at semester's first Read/Write series
Kim Elson
Issue date: 3/6/09 Section: News
03/06/09 - Yesterday afternoon, the University of Rhode Island English Department hosted the first Read/Write Series of the semester, which features creative writers from the university and across the country.
The Read/Write Series hosted authors Jan Clausen and Jane Lazarre, who presented their work in the Lippitt Hall Auditorium.
At the program, Clausen read both recent poems and those from older collections. She characterized her selections as ranging from "elegy to crazy satirical stuff and back again."
Many of the poems she read described her life in New York City-from the blackout that hit the city in 2003 to an incident in which a brick was thrown through her window. Recent concerns in her poetry were questions of "what this planet's going to be like and who's going to be living in it," she said.
Lazarre read excerpts from her new novels "Some Place Quite Unknown" and "Inheritance." An excerpt read from the latter work narrated a complex relationship between a Jewish woman and a black woman in 1919, and the interplay of race, a concern also present in her memoir, "Beyond the Whiteness of Whiteness: Memoir of a White Mother of Black Sons."
After the readings, the audience was free to ask questions. Many audience members asked the authors about their careers as creative writers and the concept of writing as a job.
Clausen mentioned that "all writers need something sustaining" and that even writers who seem cut off from the world, like Emily Dickinson, had a community in which ideas could be exchanged.
"There are valleys and peaks," Lazarre said about a writer's sense of being successful and doing something she sees as useful. "It's an inevitable part of devoting your life to something like this."
Lazarre added that when she began teaching after being a professional writer for so long, she felt relief when getting paid at the end of each week for her hard work, in contrast to her career as a writer where the sense of accomplishment is not always guaranteed. Nevertheless, citing Virginia Woolf, the author said the process of forming a novel and "discovering what belongs to what" gives her the "greatest rapture" and makes her "feel free."
The series was directed by Peter Covino, an assistant English professor, and co-directed by Mary Cappello, also an English professor. Yesterday's program was co-sponsored by the women's studies department.
The next Read/Write Series will be March 26. All Read/Write events are free and open to the public.
The Read/Write Series hosted authors Jan Clausen and Jane Lazarre, who presented their work in the Lippitt Hall Auditorium.
At the program, Clausen read both recent poems and those from older collections. She characterized her selections as ranging from "elegy to crazy satirical stuff and back again."
Many of the poems she read described her life in New York City-from the blackout that hit the city in 2003 to an incident in which a brick was thrown through her window. Recent concerns in her poetry were questions of "what this planet's going to be like and who's going to be living in it," she said.
Lazarre read excerpts from her new novels "Some Place Quite Unknown" and "Inheritance." An excerpt read from the latter work narrated a complex relationship between a Jewish woman and a black woman in 1919, and the interplay of race, a concern also present in her memoir, "Beyond the Whiteness of Whiteness: Memoir of a White Mother of Black Sons."
After the readings, the audience was free to ask questions. Many audience members asked the authors about their careers as creative writers and the concept of writing as a job.
Clausen mentioned that "all writers need something sustaining" and that even writers who seem cut off from the world, like Emily Dickinson, had a community in which ideas could be exchanged.
"There are valleys and peaks," Lazarre said about a writer's sense of being successful and doing something she sees as useful. "It's an inevitable part of devoting your life to something like this."
Lazarre added that when she began teaching after being a professional writer for so long, she felt relief when getting paid at the end of each week for her hard work, in contrast to her career as a writer where the sense of accomplishment is not always guaranteed. Nevertheless, citing Virginia Woolf, the author said the process of forming a novel and "discovering what belongs to what" gives her the "greatest rapture" and makes her "feel free."
The series was directed by Peter Covino, an assistant English professor, and co-directed by Mary Cappello, also an English professor. Yesterday's program was co-sponsored by the women's studies department.
The next Read/Write Series will be March 26. All Read/Write events are free and open to the public.
