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Sunday June 1, 2025 10:15am - 11:15am EDT
“Ultimately the poem is about the moment at which mere sequence turns consequential; where moments suddenly cohere into the momentous.” —Heather McHugh

Brenda Hillman once said, “Each piece [of a sequence of poems] should be an isolated gem”— A gem that is shaped by the pressure placed on it by the rest of the poems in a sequence. Through repetitions of structure, image and theme, the elongated form of the sequence poem can both suggest and disrupt narrative and create a space where one can explore a topic from multiple directions, styles and voices. What is the urgency of the sequence? What are the cumulative meanings, iterative meanings, and afterlives of a poem read within a sequence? In what ways does a sequence of poems allow us to become emotional historians of the present?

Sara Deniz Akant, Anna V.Q. Ross, Diannely Antigua, Ashna Ali, and Adrienne Raphel all work in this poetic form. In this panel, each poet will share work from recent projects and share the ways in which writing in sequence enlarges and informs their poetic practice. We will end with a Q&A discussion.
Speakers
avatar for Sara Deniz Akant

Sara Deniz Akant

Sara Deniz Akant is a poet, educator, and performer. She is the author of three books—most recently, Hyperphantasia (Rescue Press 2022), which was a New York Times book of the year, a Boston Globe book of the year, and won the Massachusetts Book Award in poetry. She is also the... Read More →
avatar for Ashna Ali

Ashna Ali

Raised in Italy and based in Brooklyn, Ashna Ali is a queer and disabled child of the Bangladeshi diaspora and the author of The Relativity of Living Well (Bone Bouquet, 2024... Read More →
avatar for Diannely Antigua

Diannely Antigua

Diannely Antigua is a Dominican American poet and educator, born and raised in Massachusetts. She is the author of two poetry collections, Ugly Music (YesYes Books, 2019), which was the winner of the Pamet River Prize and a 2020 Whiting Award, and Good Monster (Copper Canyon Press, 2024). She received her MFA at NYU and is the recipient of additional fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, CantoMundo, Community of Writers, and Fine Arts Work Center Summer Program. Her poems can be found in Poem-a-Day, Poetry, The American Poetry Review... Read More →
avatar for Adrienne Raphel

Adrienne Raphel

Adrienne Raphel is the author of Thinking Inside the Box: Adventures with Crosswords and the Puzzling People Who Can't Live Without Them, Our Dark Academia, and What Was It For. Her essays, poetry, and crossword puzzles appear widely, including in The New Yorker, The New York Times... Read More →
avatar for Anna V. Q. Ross

Anna V. Q. Ross

Lecturer in Creative Writing, Tufts University
Anna V. Q. Ross’s most recent book, Flutter, Kick (Red Hen Press), won the Benjamin Saltman Poetry Award. Her previous books include If a Storm (winner of the Robert Dana-Anhinga Prize for Poetry), Figuring (Bull City Press), and Hawk Weather (winner of the Jean Pedrick Chapbook... Read More →
Sunday June 1, 2025 10:15am - 11:15am EDT
PEM - Groups Hub 32 Derby Square Salem, MA 01970 USA

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