National Poetry Month – Free Reading Series

Three Public Readings
and Discussions at Eckerd College

The Eckerd College Creative Arts Collegium welcomes three renowned, award-winning poets to St. Petersburg to celebrate National Poetry Month with evening readings on the College campus and at the Salvador Dalí Museum.

Launched by the Academy of American Poets in April 1996, National Poetry Month celebrates the integral role of poets in our culture.

The Eckerd reading series will kick off at the James Center for Molecular and Life Sciences at 7 pm on April 6 with Irish poet and theologian Pádraig Ó Tuama — whose work centers on themes of language, power, conflict and religion. He is the author of several books of poetry, and his collection Poetry Unbound (W.W. Norton & Company, 2022) is an expansion of a podcast of the same name that offers reflections on 50 powerful poems.

In collaboration with the Dalí Museum’s monthly Poetry at the Dalí Series, hosted by Helen Pruitt Wallace, Eckerd will welcome Victoria Chang to read from her forthcoming book of poems, With My Back to the World, at 6:30 pm on April 12 in the Dalí Museum’s Will Raymund Theater.

The Guggenheim Fellow’s poetry collection OBIT (Copper Canyon Press, 2020) was named a New York Times Notable Book and a Time Must-Read Book and received the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Poetry and the PEN/Voelcker Award.

To wrap up the celebration, Rooja Mohassessy will take to the stage at 7 pm on April 20 at Eckerd’s Helmar and Enole Nielsen Center for Visual Arts. The Iranian-born poet and educator is a MacDowell Fellow and the author of When Your Sky Runs Into Mine (Elixir Press, 2023) — winner of the 22nd Annual Elixir Poetry Prize.

The Eckerd College Spread the Words reading series is supported by the Dr. Peter Meinke Endowment for Creative Writing.

 Originally published in the Eckerd College Newsroom.