Brooklyn Voices Presents Marie Ponsot

September 28, 2016 BK

BROOKLYN, N.Y. – September 28, 2016 - St. Joseph’s College (SJC), in partnership with Greenlight Bookstore and the Poetry Society of America, is pleased to announce that it will welcome and honor Marie Ponsot ’40 on the occasion of the release of her career retrospective, Collected Poems, as part of the College’s Centennial celebration and fall Brooklyn Voices series. This event will take place on Tuesday, October 4 at 7:30 p.m. in the Tuohy Hall Auditorium and will feature readings from acclaimed writers Sapphire, Jackson Taylor, Rosemary Deen, Ed Hirsch, LB Thompson and Cynthia Zarin.

Ponsot’s Collected Poems is a stunning collection of the prizewinning poet’s work over the last 60 years. The celebratory volume covers nearly all of her published work from True Minds, which was number five in the famous City Lights Pocket Poets series, through Easy, her most recent collection, and includes some of her newest work. 

“The collected poems of Marie Ponsot is a work that even a modest library should buy and hold precious,” said Jackson Taylor, director of The Writers Foundry at SJC Brooklyn. “Its pages reveal a poetic masterpiece that like all great literary talent, celebrates the life, truth and trials of our peculiar human species.”

Ponsot was born in 1921 and is the winner of Poetry Magazine’s Ruth Lilly Prize for Lifetime Achievement and the Poetry Society of America’s Frost Medal. She is the author of six previous collections, including The Bird Catcher, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for poetry. A professor emerita of English at Queens College, Ponsot also taught at the Unterberg Poetry Center of the 92nd Street Y, the New School University and Beijing University. Ponsot is a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and lives in New York City.

Books will be available for purchase following the reading. Tickets are free, but an RSVP is required to attend. Visit brownpapertickets.com for more information or contact Michael Banach at 718.940.5584 or [email protected].

About Brooklyn Voices
Created in collaboration with Greenlight Bookstore, the aim of the Brooklyn Voices series is to promote and enhance the creative vitality of our home neighborhoods of Fort Greene and Clinton Hill by providing local writers, artists, and intellectuals with a forum in which to discuss and present their works to our neighbors, patrons, and students. Through lectures, forums, performances, and public discussion, Brooklyn Voices seeks to make a meaningful contribution to the thriving intellectual culture of the neighborhood and ensure that our community remains a stimulating place in which to live, learn, and do business.

About St. Joseph’s College
St. Joseph’s College has been dedicated to providing a diverse population of students in the New York metropolitan area with an affordable education rooted in the liberal arts tradition since 1916. Independent and coeducational, the College provides a strong academic and value-oriented education at the undergraduate and graduate levels, aiming to prepare each student for a life characterized by integrity, intellectual and spiritual values, social responsibility and service. Through SJC Brooklyn, SJC Long Island and SJC Online, the College offers degrees in more than 49 majors, special course offerings and certificates, affiliated and pre-professional programs.