Karl Kirchwey’s (1995 Fellow) seventh book, Stumbling Blocks: Roman Poems (TriQuarterly/Northwestern University Press, October 2017), like his second book, The Engrafted Word (Henry Holt, 1998), takes Rome as the geographical source for explorations of history, myth, and autobiography. During his tenure as the Andrew Heiskell Arts Director at the American Academy in Rome (2010–13), Kirchwey organized walking tours to sites, monuments, and works of art in Rome about which great poems have been written. These itineraries have given rise to a new volume in the Everyman's Library Pocket Poets series, Poems of Rome, edited by Kirchwey and including work from the Renaissance to the present. On this occasion, Kirchwey will read from and talk about these two books that had their origins at the American Academy in Rome.

Kirchwey is the author of seven books of poetry, including most recently Stumbling Blocks: Roman Poems (2017) and Mount Lebanon (2011). His book The Engrafted Word (1998) was a New York Times Notable Book. In addition, Kirchwey’s translation of Paul Verlaine’s first book, as Poems Under Saturn, was published in 2011, and he has been working on translations of work by contemporary Italian poets Giovanni Giudici (1924–2011) and Giorgio Vigolo (1894–1983). His verse drama based on the Alcestis of Euripides is Airdales & Cipher, and he has just edited an anthology of poems about Rome for the Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets series. His essays and reviews have appeared in the New York Times Book Review, Parnassus: Poetry in Review, Literary Imagination, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and elsewhere. He has received NEA, Guggenheim, and Ingram Merrill grants, as well as the Cato Prize for Poetry. For many years director of the Poetry Center of the 92nd Street Y in New York, Kirchwey also taught in and directed the Creative Writing Program at Bryn Mawr College (2000–10) and since 2014 has been professor of English and creative writing at Boston University, where he teaches in the MFA program.

The event will be held in English. You can watch this event live at https://livestream.com/aarome.