Charlie Wright, publisher of Seattle’s Wave Books, created the Bagley Wright Lecture Series on Poetry (BWLS) in memory of his late father, the businessman and philanthropist Bagley Wright.  The BWLS supports contemporary poets as they explore in-depth their own thinking on poetry and poetics, and give a series of lectures resulting from these investigations. 

Bagley Wright Lecture Series: Douglas Kearney
March 24
7:00–8:00 p.m. PDT

Douglas Kearney has long written about the conflation between violence and entertainment in U.S. American culture, from badman folklore to postcards of lynching. Yet, the question that may haunt any writer is, what are the ethics of representing violence? How do poetic aestheticizations of brutality transform, reinscribe, or abet flesh and blood violence? Through a series of vignettes in which Kearney entangles his encounters with violence in writing and his own attempts to put it down on the page, the poet investigates what compels him about the subject.

Kearney’s newest collection, Sho, will be published by Wave in 2021.

Register in advance here.