Defying Convention: A Reading by Poet Terrance Hayes

Terrance Hayes (New York University)
Phil Memmer (YMCA Downtown Writers Center)

How do poets play with the conventions both of traditional form and society? Acclaimed poet Terrance Hayes explores both, through this evening of poetry readings and Q&A moderated by Phil Memmer.

Hayes is the author of such celebrated books of poems as American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin (a National Book Award finalist), How to Be Drawn, and Lighthead (winner of the 2010 National Book Award for Poetry). He has received many other honors and awards, including a 2014 MacArthur Foundation Genius Award, two Pushcart selections, eight Best American Poetry selections, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and the Guggenheim Foundation.

In a citation for his 2014 Genius Award, the MacArthur Foundation wrote, “Terrance Hayes is a poet who reflects on race, gender, and family in works marked by formal dexterity and a reverence for history and the artistry of crafting verse. Employing an almost improvisational approach to writing, Hayes conjoins fluid, often humorous wordplay with references to popular culture both past and present in his subversion of canonical poetic forms.”

This event is part of Syracuse Symposium’s year-long series on “Conventions.”

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