Poet Karen Swenson will read her Asia-inspired works in Oct. 13 Syracuse Symposium event

Poet Karen Swenson will read her Asia-inspired works in Oct. 13 Syracuse Symposium eventOctober 10, 2003Kelly Homan Rodoskikahoman@syr.edu

Award-winning poet Karen Swenson will present “Poetic Journeys in Asia” at Syracuse University on Oct. 13. The reading begins at 4 p.m. in the Hillyer Room, located on the sixth floor of E.S. Bird Library, and is free and open to the public. Swenson lives part of each year in Asia, and her travels have taken her to Burma, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and other countries. She has produced five volumes of poetry, including “The Landlady in Bangkok” (Copper Canyon, 1994), which won a National Poetry Series Prize, and, most recently, “A Daughter’s Latitude: New and Selected” (Copper Canyon, 2000). She is also a journalist, and her feminist travelogues have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New Leader and other publications.

Swenson received a bachelor’s degree from Barnard College and a master’s degree from New York University. She has taught creative writing at many colleges and universities throughout the U.S., and currently lives in New York City.

The event is co-sponsored by the Syracuse University Library, the Department of Religion and the South Asia Center, and is part of the Syracuse Symposium. The symposium, presented for the University by The College of Arts and Sciences, is an annual intellectual festival celebrating interdisciplinary thinking, imagining and creating. The 2003 theme is “Journeys”; journeys of exploration and discovery, intellectual journeys, mythical and artistic journeys, migrations of peoples, exiles, liberations, pilgrimages and more. The series includes lectures, exhibits, performances and other special events.