Sarah Lawrence College Launches John and Penny Barr Poetry Reading Series

Sarah Lawrence College is launching the John and Penny Barr Poetry Reading Series, a new offering celebrating the “ever-changing art of contemporary poetry.”

Award-winning poet Joshua Mehigan, a graduate of the Sarah Lawrence College’s MFA program in writing, will open the series on September 30 at 7 p.m. in the Donnelley Lecture Hall, Heimbold Visual Arts Center, 915 Kimball Ave. in Bronxville.

The reading is free and open to the public.

“Josh Mehigan is the perfect poet to launch our series. His burgeoning reputation is a tribute to Sarah Lawrence College and his spare, formal poems are giving postindustrial America a new identity in literature,” said John Barr, who, with his wife Penny, established the series. “Sarah Lawrence is the perfect home for our series. Writing here is not just a subject in a syllabus, it’s a passion at the heart of the college.”

According to the college, Mehigan’s first book, The Optimist, was a finalist for the 2004 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Poetry and winner of the Hollis Summers Poetry Prize. In 2015 his second book, Accepting the Disaster, was named a best book of the year in The Times Literary Supplement and The New York Times Book Review. He is a recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation (2015) and the National Endowment for the Arts (2011). In 2011 Mehigan was awarded Poetry magazine’s Editor’s Prize for best feature article of the year and the Levinson Prize in 2013. He has served as a visiting writer at many schools, including Amherst, Johns Hopkins, and Goethe University Frankfurt and currently teaches in the CUNY system and as a faculty member of Brooklyn Poets.

By bringing notable poets, both prominent and emerging, to read at the College the new series aims to enrich and inspire the community of writers and readers at Sarah Lawrence and in greater Westchester.

John Barr is a poet and the former president of the Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine and former faculty member of the Sarah Lawrence MFA program. His poetry has been published in four fine press and four trade press editions, most recently The Hundred Fathom Curve: New and Collected Poems, and a two-volume mock epic, The Adventures of Ibn Opcit.

Penny Barr, as Project Manager for Children’s Poetry, created and established the Children’s Poet Laureate at the Poetry Foundation. Her work at the Foundation also included collaborations with HBO, producing two Emmy Award-winning videos for Outstanding Children’s Programming. She currently serves on the boards of Poets House and the Emily Dickinson Museum.

The next reading in the series will feature Sarah Lindsay, author of four books of poetry and recipient of the 2012 Carolyn Kizer prize, a Lannan Literary Fellowship, and a Pushcart prize, on March 2.

A reception with book sales and signing will follow Mehigan’s reading. No reservations are required for this free program. For more information, please contact collegeevents@sarahlawrence.edu or call 914-395-2412.

Photo: Joshua Mehigan. Photo credit: Contributed