CELEBRATED POET HOMERO ARIDJIS WILL SPEAK ABOUT ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES AND READ FROM HIS POETRY DURING A PECIAL OPEN FORUM AT BARD COLLEGE ON MARCH 27 Bard professors and poets John Ashbery and Robert Kelly will join Aridjis for the program, "Environmental
ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y.—On Thursday, March 27, Homero Aridjis, Mexico’s most celebrated living poet and a committed environmental activist, will speak about environmental issues during an Open Forum presentation entitled "Environmental Activism and Poetry." This presentation will be followed by a poetry reading featuring John Ashbery, Charles P. Stevenson Jr. Professor of Languages and Literature at Bard, and Robert Kelly, Asher B. Edelman Professor of Literature at Bard, reading English-language versions of Aridjis's poetry. Betty Ferber de Aridjis, an environmental activist and translator, will also participate in the program. The event is free and open to the public and will begin at 4:00 p.m. in the multipurpose room of the Bertelsmann Campus Center. A brief book-signing session with Aridjis will follow the poetry reading.
Homero Aridjis is one of Mexico's foremost poets and novelists. He was born in Contepec, Michoacán, Mexico, in 1940 to a Greek father and Mexican mother. Three collections of his poetry have appeared in English—Blue Spaces, Exaltation of Light, and the recently published bilingual edition Eyes To See Otherwise / Ojos de otro mirar— as well as three novels: Persephone; 1492: The Life and Times of Juan Cabezón of Castile (for which he was awarded the Grinzane Cavour Prize); and The Lord of the Last Days: Visions of the Year 1000. Several of his 30 books of poetry and prose have been translated into a dozen languages. He appears in all the major anthologies of Mexican and Latin American poetry: New Poetry of Mexico (Dutton, 1966); Antología de la poesía hispanoamericana actual (Siglo Veintiuno Editores, 1987), and Twentieth-Century Latin American Poetry (University of Texas Press, 1996).
A two-time recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Aridjis has taught at Columbia, New York, and Indiana Universities, and has served as the ambassador of Mexico to the Netherlands and Switzerland. He is also the founder and president of the Group of 100, an international environmental organization of writers, artists, and scientists. In 1997 he was awarded the Prix Roger Caillois for the body of his work. Aridjis is the president of PEN International and lives in Mexico City. His wife, Betty Ferber, is also an environmental activist, and has translated Aridjis's poems and novels into English.
The Open Forum presentation is cosponsored by the Bard Center for Environmental Policy, the Division of Languages and Literature, and the Latin American and Iberian Studies Program at Bard. For further information about this event, contact David Tavárez at 845-758-7545, or e-mail [email protected].
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(3.25.03)