Today on My Poetic Side we take a look at the US poet laureate emeritus’s speaking engagement, the poet’s pub that has won a renovation award, and another poet’s monument time capsule.
Juan Felipe Herrera Speaking Engagement
Juan Felipe Herrera, the US poet laureate emeritus will be speaking at the SUNY Oswego Living Writers series at the end of the month. The event will take place as part of the National Hispanic / Latinx Heritage Month. There will be a conversation via Zoom and also a virtual reading.
Herrera, who was born in 1948, is an activist, poet and educator. He was the poet laureate of the US from 2015 to 2017 and the California poet laureate from 2012 to 2015. He has written over 30 books including many collections of poetry, and has won a number of awards, including several lifetime achievement awards.
Poets Favourite Pub Receives Grant
A pub in Ceredigion that was much loved by the poet Dylan Thomas has been awarded a grant of £300,000, which it is hoping to use to pay for renovations.
The Vale of Aeron pub was a popular haunt for the playwright and poet during the 1940s when he lived in the area. The pub is just one of three projects in Wales that will be receiving a cash award from the UK Government as part of the Community Ownership Fund. The fund was set up to help community projects so that they could be run by the community themselves for the benefit of all those individuals who made up the local community. The pub itself was purchased by the community two years ago when they managed to raise the money for the purchase price themselves.
Poet’s Family Plan to Open Monument and Solve Mystery
The family of the poet John Neihardt have been given federal permission to retrieve a monument dedicated to the poet and author who was a member of their family.
They now plan to trek to the South Dakota location where the century-old monument is located. They are hoping that they will eventually be able to unlock the mystery that is hidden in the monument which was erected at the request of the poet. He referred to it as an “alter of courage” to Hugh Glass, the subject of one of his poems. The poem talks about the mauling of the protagonist in 1823 by a bear, and his subsequent 200 mile journey whilst injured.
Neihardt is said to have placed a time capsule in the heart of the monument. He wrote that the capsule contained an original manuscript.
The monument stands on land that belongs to the US Bureau of Reclamation land, who have recently determined that the rights to the monument are owned by the family.
Neihardt’s granddaughter and the rest of the family are hoping to transfer the monument to the Neihardt State Historic Site which is a museum in Bancroft, Nebraska dedicated to the poet.
They are not sure of the exact location within the monument of the time capsule and plan to proceed with extreme caution during its extraction. Once they know what it contains, they will decide when to make the discovery public.
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