Upcoming Poetry Reading: Aimee Nezhukumatathil
My friend (and OSU MFA alum) Aimee Nezhukumatathil is going to be in town tomorrow for a reading over at Columbia College. She is the author of two books of poetry (Miracle Fruit and, most recently, At the Drive-In Volcano). Last year, she got some nice press from none other than Garrison Keillor, who read her poem on The Writer’s Almanac.
For those of you who are around tomorrow, I can’t say enough good things about Aimee’s writing. She is an excellent writer, and her poems have this fantastic combination of qualities – they’re lush with description, and yet somehow also entirely accessible. There’s a lot of humor, a lot of both History and popular culture.
For those of you in Chicago who are into poetry – this is an invite for you. And in particular, those of you out there who think poetry is all froof and willfully mysterious phrases and little locked boxes of pretentiousness? Come listen, and you’ll see why Aimee’s poetry is none of these things. She’s got some great stories, and she’ll be sharing them tomorrow.
Date: Wednesday, March 5th
Time: 5:30 PM
Location: Columbia College, Music Center Concert Hall,
Address: 1014 S. Michigan Avenue
As a personal aside… this morning, I looked over and was reminded of a gift that Aimee gave me way back, when we were both grad students attending OSU’s MFA program:
I think I got the sticker sometime around 1998, 1999. It found a home on my old HP DeskJet 400 printer, a printer I had from my undergrad days, and guarded over almost everything I wrote/printed. In 2003, after it started getting a little old in the teeth… I upgraded (finally) and got a nice Brother HL-1440 Laster Print.
I was able to successfully relocate the sticker, and I’m happy to say it’s been holding fast for coming up on 5 years now. I think this guy is at least ten years old (a litlte scary, when I stop to think about it). Thanks again, Aimee!
Ah, dang. I’ve gotten some emails from Aimee over the past 12 hours, and it sounds like she’s had some really rough times with the weather out in Fredonia, NY. They cancelled her flight about 10 minutes prior to the scheduled takeoff time, and also closed the thruway (effectively trapping them in the airport). She finally got back home after midnight.This morning, she was slated for a 6:30 AM flight, but the weather was still so bad that the thruway was still closed through 7AM. So even if she willing to brave the elements and drive out to the airport… there was no way to get there.Craziness. Sounds like quite the weather, as all area schools and the college are closed.
avoision (March 5, 2008 at 12:29 pm)