Skip to main content
  • Home
  • About
  • Faculty Experts
  • For The Media
  • ’Cuse Conversations Podcast
  • Topics
    • Alumni
    • Events
    • Faculty
    • Students
    • All Topics
  • Contact
  • Submit
Arts & Culture
  • All News
  • Arts & Culture
  • Business & Economy
  • Campus & Community
  • Health & Society
  • Media, Law & Policy
  • STEM
  • Veterans
  • University Statements
  • Syracuse University Impact
  • |
  • The Peel
  • Athletics
Sections
  • All News
  • Arts & Culture
  • Business & Economy
  • Campus & Community
  • Health & Society
  • Media, Law & Policy
  • STEM
  • Veterans
  • University Statements
  • Syracuse University Impact
  • |
  • The Peel
  • Athletics
  • Home
  • About
  • Faculty Experts
  • For The Media
  • ’Cuse Conversations Podcast
  • Topics
    • Alumni
    • Events
    • Faculty
    • Students
    • All Topics
  • Contact
  • Submit
Arts & Culture

Ellen Bryant Voigt to Close Out Spring Carver Series

Monday, April 21, 2014, By Renée K. Gadoua
Share
speakers
Ellen Bryant Voigt

Ellen Bryant Voigt

The poet Ellen Bryant Voigt will close out the spring 2014 Raymond Carver Reading Series at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 23, in Gifford Auditorium. A question-and-answer session will precede the reading from 3:45-4:30 p.m.

The event is free and open to the public. Parking is available in SU’s paid lots.

Voigt’s 2007 collection, “Messenger: New and Selected Poems, 1976-2006” (W.W. Norton & Company) was a finalist for the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in poetry and a finalist for the National Book Award.

“Voigt has a highly tempered poetic intelligence, most obvious in her line-by-line determination to align evocative images with their emotional incentives,” The New York Times wrote of the acclaimed collection. “Her arrestingly accurate images remind the reader of the suggestive correlation of sensuous emblems to emotional realities.”

Voigt is the author of several other poetry collections, including “Headwaters: Poems” (Norton, 2013) and “Shadow of Heaven” (Norton, 2002). “Shadow of Heaven” was also a finalist for the National Book Award. Her work as an editor includes, with Heather McHugh, “Hammer and Blaze: A Gathering of Contemporary American Poets” (University of Georgia Press, 2002); “The Flexible Lyric” (University of Georgia Press, 1999), a collection of essays on the craft of writing; and “Poets Teaching Poets: Self and the World,” with Gregory Orr (University of Michigan Press, 1996).

Publishers Weekly said “Headwaters: Poems” is “defined by a liquid precision.” The poems in this collection—with no punctuation and no capitalization—read “as though she has burst in on each poem mid-thought.”

A New York Times review of “Shadow of Heaven” praised Voigt’s rich “descriptions of nature and the metaphors for human behavior she extracts from them.” She has “a gift for lyric poetry that is at once smoothly assured and sometimes overwhelming in its intensity.”

Voigt served as Vermont’s state poet from 1999-2003. She developed and directed the nation’s first low-residency writing program at Goddard College in Plainfield, Vt. She now teaches at the low-residency MFA program at Warren Wilson College in Swannanoa, N.C.

In an interview with Granta, Voigt, who trained as a pianist, described the connection between music and narrative. The two, she said, are not mutually exclusive: “Some of my poems are narrative, and are as ‘sound-driven’ as the lyrics, at least in the making of them. Almost every poem in the language contains, importantly, aural properties, whether or not these are overt.”

SU’s reading series is named for Raymond Carver, the great short story writer and poet who taught at SU in the 1980s and died in 1988, and is presented by the Creative Writing Program in SU’s College of Arts and Sciences. The series is presented as part of the popular undergraduate course Living Writers. The series each year brings 12 to 14 prominent writers to campus to read their works and interact with students. Students read an author’s book, write about it, and discuss it before the author’s visit. For information, call 315-443-2174.

  • Author

Renée K. Gadoua

  • Recent
  • DPS Earns Accreditation From International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators
    Friday, June 6, 2025, By Kiana Racha
  • Rock Record Illuminates Oxygen History
    Thursday, June 5, 2025, By Dan Bernardi
  • What Can Ancient Climate Tell Us About Modern Droughts?
    Thursday, June 5, 2025, By News Staff
  • Blackstone LaunchPad Founders Circle Welcomes New Members
    Thursday, June 5, 2025, By Cristina Hatem
  • Syracuse Stage Concludes 2024-25 Season With ‘The National Pastime’
    Wednesday, June 4, 2025, By Joanna Penalva

More In Arts & Culture

Syracuse Stage Concludes 2024-25 Season With ‘The National Pastime’

Syracuse Stage concludes its 2024-25 season with the world premiere production of “The National Pastime,” a provocative psychological thriller about state secrets, sonic weaponry, stolen baseball signs and the father and son relationship in the middle of it all. Written…

Syracuse Stage Hosts Inaugural Julie Lutz New Play Festival

Syracuse Stage is pleased to announce that the inaugural Julie Lutz New Play Festival will be held at the theatre this June. Formerly known as the Cold Read Festival of New Plays, the festival will feature a work-in-progress reading and…

Light Work Opens New Exhibitions

Light Work has two new exhibitions, “The Archive as Liberation” and “2025 Light Work Grants in Photography, that will run through Aug. 29. “The Archive as Liberation” The exhibition is on display in the Kathleen O. Ellis Gallery at Light…

Spelman College Glee Club to Perform at Return to Community: A Sunday Gospel Jazz Service June 29

As the grand finale of the 2025 Syracuse International Jazz Fest, the Spelman College Glee Club of Atlanta will perform at Hendricks Chapel on Sunday, June 29. The Spelman College Glee Club, now in its historic 100th year, is the…

Alumnus, Visiting Scholar Mosab Abu Toha G’23 Wins Pulitzer Prize for New Yorker Essays

Mosab Abu Toha G’23, a graduate of the M.F.A. program in creative writing in the College of Arts and Sciences and a current visiting scholar at Syracuse University, has been awarded the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for a series of essays…

Subscribe to SU Today

If you need help with your subscription, contact sunews@syr.edu.

Connect With Us

  • X
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Youtube
  • LinkedIn
Social Media Directory

For the Media

Find an Expert Follow @SyracuseUNews
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Youtube
  • LinkedIn
  • @SyracuseU
  • @SyracuseUNews
  • Social Media Directory
  • Accessibility
  • Privacy
  • Campus Status
  • Syracuse.edu
© 2025 Syracuse University News. All Rights Reserved.