Administration, staff, Fellows and friends gathered on the beautiful backyard terrace of the Villa Chiaraviglio last week to raise a glass and bid the fondest of farewells to Andrew Heiskell Arts Director Karl Kirchwey, FAAR’95, his wife Tamzen Flanders, and their children, Elinor and Tobias. After an extremely successful three-year term, the poet and professor will shortly be returning to the picturesque campus of Bryn Mawr College where he will resume his post as Professor of the Arts and the Director of Bryn Mawr’s Creative Writing Program.
During his period of tenure between July 2010 and July 2013, Karl attracted superlative literary figures and organized world-class public events on behalf of the American Academy in Rome. Karl curated and oversaw all of the Academy’s literature “pillar” events, facilitating residencies and offering tireless support to Academy Fellows. He was responsible for bringing Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott, former Poet Laureate of the United States Robert Hass, and Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney to the Academy, in each case as William B. Hart Poet-in-Residence.
He was responsible for a major series of public events in the arts each year, including annual residencies and concerts by the Scharoun Ensemble of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, concerts by the new music festivals Nuovi Spazi Musicali and Nuova Consonanza, and gallery shows including an Italian Affiliated Fellows’ retrospective early in 2011 called ACCADEMIA ° STANZE ° PERSONE, a show of photographs by American expatriate Milton Gendel curated by incoming Heiskell Arts Director Peter Benson Miller, five simultaneous Fellow-curated shows in January of 2013, and a show of poems by Seamus Heaney and watercolor paintings by Wendy Artin in May of 2013 entitled Stone From Delphi, based on a limited edition fine arts book by Arion Press.
In March 2011, Karl made it possible for the Academy to present the world premiere of Derek Walcott’s new verse play Moon-Child: Ti-Jean in Concert, the Sala Aurelia being retrofitted as a theater space for the occasion. March 2011 also saw a Tribute to Nobel Laureate Joseph Brodsky, RAAR’81, featuring readings and reminiscences by friends and fellow-poets including Roberto Calasso, Boris Khersonsky, Mary Jo Salter, Mark Strand, RAAR’83, Derek Walcott, and Adam Zagajewski. In conjunction with Robert Hass’s residency in May 2012, Karl organized “Translating Poetry: Readings and Conversations.” The event gathered twelve poets and ten translators to discuss the art of translating poetry, giving particular attention to Hass’ translations of Polish Nobel Laureate Czesław Miłosz (eminent Polish poets Julia Hartwig and Adam Zagajewski participated), but also focusing on Geoffrey Brock’s definitive new anthology The FSG Book of Twentieth Century Italian Poetry, including distinguished contemporary Italian poets Edoardo Albinati, Antonella Anedda, Franco Buffoni, Patrizia Cavalli, Massimo Gezzi, Franco Loi, Valerio Magrelli, Lucio Mariani, Guido Mazzoni, and Maria Luisa Spaziani. In May 2013, Karl again masterminded an intense two-day series of readings and conversations dedicated to “Ovid Transformed: the Poet and the Metamorphoses,” this time gathering fifteen writers and scholars to the Academy to consider the enduring legacy of the Latin poet in poetry, fiction, and drama. The Ovid events coincided with Seamus Heaney’s residency, and Mr. Heaney presented a reading from his own work as well as his translations of Ovid’s versions of the Orpheus myth. Karl also worked to expand the AAR’s network of program collaborators, involving such organizations as the Comune di Roma’s Casa delle Letterature, the Polish Institute in Rome, the Keats-Shelley House Museum, the British Council, the British School at Rome, the Spanish Academy, John Cabot University, and La Sapienza Università di Roma.
Remarkably, while working so diligently on behalf of the Academy, Karl managed to publish a sixth book of poetry, Mount Lebanon (2011), and a translation of Paul Verlaine’s Poèmes saturniens, entitled Poems Under Saturn (2011). His third book of poems, The Engrafted Word (1998), consisted of Roman poems mostly written during his own Fellowship year in 1994-5; Karl is returning to the United States with the manuscript of a seventh book of poems entitled Stumbling Blocks: Roman Poems, consisting of work composed during the past three years.
At this year’s Certificates and Rosettes Ceremony, AAR Director Christopher Celenza, FAAR’94, presented Karl with a 1598 Venetian edition of Ovid’s Metamorphoses translated into Italian ottava rima by Giovanni Andrea dall’Anguillara in honor of Karl’s splendid literary exploits. In the more informal setting of celebrations at Chiaraviglio, the Fellows had their own opportunity to honor Karl with an album of personal reminiscences, comprising writing, graphic art, and even music. Donald and Maria Cox/Samuel H. Kress Foundation Fellow Camille Mathieu spoke with droll eloquence to express the deep regard and profound affection felt for Karl by the entire community. Her humor helped to lighten the general sense of fugitive intimacy that hung in the air, but Karl and Tamzen reminded us that the profound connections fostered at the Academy inevitably extend beyond the reach of its walls or those of Rome all the way across the ocean to the suburb of Philadelphia where Karl and his family live, and which they refer to as “Stately Wayne Manor.”
Karl Kirchwey has nurtured the Fellows and enriched the Academy for three years with his professional courtesy, personal warmth and indefatigable dedication to our community. “Cura, ut valeas,” Karl Kirchwey, “In bocca al lupo,” from us all.