WEEKEND OF MAY 19-21
MILL VALLEY LIBRARY

Mill Valley Library and Marin Poetry Center are pleased to present a local version of Poets for Science, originally developed by the Wick Poetry Center and curated by Jane Hirshfield. The event includes:

Poetry Reading at Mill Valley Library, Friday, May 19 at 7 pm, featuring Forrest Gander, Kimiko Hahn, Jane Hirshfield, and Meryl Natchez. Each poet will read poems connected to the themes mentioned above. Reading hosted by Amanda Moore. Register here.

Ability to participate in a community thread poem, an ongoing online response to the prompt of Gary Snyder’s poem “For All.”

A nature observing and writing creek walk outside the Library at the SmartGarden, Saturday, May 20 from 10-12pm, led by Emilie Lygren. This workshop will focus on connecting with nature through the lens of science and poetry. Participants will practice observation skills, explore the local environment, and write poems based on what they notice. All ages and levels of experience with poetry, science, and writing are welcome! Register here.

Special Collection of poems on banners on display at Mill Valley Library throughout May. Each poem was specifically chosen to demonstrate the connection between poetry and a particular area of science, from the Hubble Telescope and MRI machines to childhood cognitive development, biology, ecology, and natural history.

Popup readings by MPC members on Sunday afternoon, May 21st :

2 pm: Mamahuhu  Restaurant 173 Throckmorton Ave – Rebecca Foust
2:25 pm: Equator Coffee – 2 Miller Ave – Erin Rodoni
2:45 pm: Seager Gray Gallery  108 Throckmorton – Lucille Lang Day
3:10 pm: Poet and the Bench 11 Throckmorton – Judy Bertelsen and Sandra Cross
3:30 pm: Waldscraft Bakery 31 Sunnyside Ave – Susan Cohen
4 pm: Depot  Downtown Plaza – Linda Michel-Cassidy

Poets for Science will also be having events and the installation at both the National Academy of Science (April 20) and Nobel Science Summit (May 24-26) this spring.

Forrest Gander, known best as a writer and translator, has a degree in geology and a lifelong fascination with poetry and science. Gander's book, Be With, was awarded the 2019 Pulitzer Prize. Concerned with the way we are revised and translated in encounters with the foreign, his book, Core Samples from the World, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Gander's books have been translated and published in more than a dozen other languages, and he has been awarded the Best Translated Book Award. He is a United States Artists Rockefeller Fellow and has received fellowships from The National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim, Whiting, and Howard Foundations. In 2011, he was awarded the Library of Congress Witter Bynner Fellowship.

Kimiko Hahn is the author of ten books of poems, including: Foreign Bodies (W. W. Norton, 2020); Brain Fever (WWN, 2014), and Toxic Flora (WWN, 2010), both collections prompted by science. Honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, PEN/Voelcker Award, Shelley Memorial Prize, a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writers’ Award as well as fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the N.Y. Foundation for the Arts. She has taught in graduate programs at the University of Houston and New York University, and is a distinguished professor in the MFA Program in Creative Writing & Literary Translation at Queens College, The City University of New York; she has also taught for literary organizations such as the Fine Arts Work Center, Cave Canem, and Kundiman.

Jane Hirshfield, writes “some of the most important poetry in the world today,” according to Naomi Shihab Nye in The New York Times. She is one of American poetry's central spokespersons for concerns of the biosphere. She is a former Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and the founder of Poets For Science in conjunction with the 2017 March for Science in Washington D.C. Hirshfield is the author of several books of essays and translations and nine award-winning collections of poetry, most recently Ledger (Knopf, 2020). Her honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller foundations and the National Endowment for the Arts, The Poetry Center Book Award, California Book Award, and others. In 2019 she was elected into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

Meryl Natchez’ fourth book, CATWALK, with blurbs from Jericho Brown, Lynn Emanuel, & David St. John received an Indie Best Book 2020 Award from Kirkus Reviews. Natchez’ work has appeared or is forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, LA Review of Books, Hudson Review, Terrain, Comstock Review, Poetry Northwest, Literary Matters, The American Journal of Poetry, Tupelo Quarterly, ZYZZYVA, and others. More at www.merylnatchez.com. Her work was a finalist in the 2022 James Hearst Poetry Prize and for the Joan Swift Memorial Award.

Amanda Moore (reading host) is the author of Requeening, a debut collection of poems selected for the National Poetry Series, published with HarperCollins/Ecco in October 2021. Her work has appeared in journals and anthologies including ZYZZYVA, Cream City Review, and Best New Poets, and she is the recipient of writing awards from The Writing Salon, Brush Creek Arts Foundation, and The Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts. Amanda is a high school teacher and lives by the beach in the Outer Sunset neighborhood of San Francisco.

Emilie Lygren (workshop facilitator) is a poet and outdoor educator who has developed dozens of resources focused on nature journaling, outdoor science education, and social-emotional learning through her work with the BEETLES Project at the Lawrence Hall of Science. Her first collection of poetry, What We Were Born For was the Poetry Foundation's monthly book pick in February 2022.

To learn more, visit poetsforscience.org