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UVA Creative Writing Program events feature poet Brenda Hillman

Chris Graham
Brenda Hillman
Brenda Hillman. Photo courtesy Robert Hass.

The University of Virginia Creative Writing Program welcomes poet Brenda Hillman as the spring 2021 Kapnick Distinguished Writer-in-Residence.

Hillman will give three webinars in February, in which she will present the “6 M’s” of poetic thinking – Metaphor, Metonymy, Meaning, Mystery, Magic and Morality – to refresh the practice of reading and writing poetry for the general reader as well as for the advanced student of poetry.

Hillman is the author of ten collections of poetry: White Dress, Fortress, Death Tractates, Bright Existence, Loose Sugar, Cascadia, Pieces of Air in the Epic, Practical Water, for which she won the LA Times Book Award for Poetry, Seasonal Works with Letters on Fire, which received the 2014 Griffin Poetry Prize and the Northern California Book Award for Poetry; and her most recent Extra Hidden Life, Among the Days.

In 2016 she was named Academy of American Poets Chancellor. Among other awards Hillman has received are the 2012 Academy of American Poets Fellowship, the 2005 William Carlos Williams Prize for poetry, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation.

Written during the year of the pandemic, the talks include examples of contemporary and modern poems, paying special attention to aspects of a great art that are sometimes considered challenging.

Hillman, whose work is eclectic in style and subject matter, will bring reminders of the significance and usefulness of poetry for our time.

  • Feb 10 A Poetic Toolkit: Metaphor and Metonymy
  • Feb 17 A Poetic Toolkit: Meaning and Mystery
  • Feb 24 A Poetic Toolkit: Magic and Morality

All talks are at 7 p.m. EST.

Register once for all three webinars at tinyurl.com/hillmanlectures

Chris Graham

Chris Graham

Chris Graham, the king of "fringe media," a zero-time Virginia Sportswriter of the Year, and a member of zero Halls of Fame, is the founder and editor of Augusta Free Press. A 1994 alum of the University of Virginia, Chris is the author and co-author of seven books, including Poverty of Imagination, a memoir published in 2019. For his commentaries on news, sports and politics, go to his YouTube page, or subscribe to his Street Knowledge podcast. Email Chris at [email protected].