The Mar. 9 “Writers Read” program at the L.E. Phillips Memorial Library will feature poetry written by writers from Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.
The monthly series is organized by Eau Claire’s writer-in-residence, UW-EC Prof. Emeritus Max Garland, who was also the Wisconsin Poet Laureate in 2013-14.
Garland said that one reason he organized this program was that he “wanted to know more about these countries than has been revealed in recent headlines” concerning President Trump’s efforts to suspend immigration from them.
“Since poetry is one of our most profound ways of preserving and transmitting knowledge, sharing on a deeper level the experience of what it’s like to be human, I hoped to learn something from the words of people about whom I know so little,” he said in an email.
“I thought others might find it interesting as well, and from responses I’ve gotten this seems to be the case,” he added. “But I’m willing to believe that people might find the event interesting for any number of reasons.
“James Baldwin pointed out that one of the things you learn from literature is that what is happening to others is happening to you,” Garland said in noting one possible reason for the community interest.
The program is scheduled for 6 p.m. in the Eau Claire Room on the Library’s lower level. Members of the public are invited to “celebrate the power and beauty of poetry” by bringing work by a poet from these seven countries, according to a press release from the Library.
Sign-up for presentations will start at 5:45 p.m.
Garland noted that “on a strictly personal level,” he was also motivated to put this program together.
“Having sat through hundreds of Southern Baptist and Methodist sermons as a child, not always voluntarily, I still can’t seem to shake that passage in Luke, when the lawyer asks Jesus , ‘And who is my neighbor?’ The answer to that might be part of the motivation for this reading,” he said.
“I’m assuming many of us might discover poets we may not have known, but may be glad to have discovered,” he added.
Garland said that a poet who heard about this event has organized a similar one in Duluth.
“I understand there may be others as well,” he said. “I’ve also seen recent online postings of poems from writers from these nations. It seems like a fairly obvious impulse for poets to be interested in other poets, particularly in places of great turmoil and suffering.”
More information is available at the Library’s Information & Reference desk, by calling 715-839-5004 or by emailing librarian@eauclaire.lib.wi.us.