Phosphorescence July 2024 featured poets:
Rosa Lane and Patrick Donnelly
VIRTUAL PROGRAM
This virtual program is free to attend. Registration is required.
To Emily Dickinson, phosphorescence was a divine spark and the illuminating light behind learning — it was volatile, but transformative in nature. Produced by the Emily Dickinson Museum, the Phosphorescence Contemporary Poetry Series celebrates contemporary creativity that echoes Dickinson’s own revolutionary poetic voice. The Series features established and emerging poets whose work and backgrounds represent the diversity of the flourishing contemporary poetry scene. Join us on a Thursday evening each month to hear from poets around the world as they read their work and discuss what poetry and Dickinson mean to them.
About this month’s poets:
Rosa Lane, poet and architect, is author of four poetry collections including Called Back, a theatrical monologue in tribute to Emily Dickinson imagined (forthcoming September 2024, Tupelo Press); Chouteau’s Chalk (winner, 2017 Georgia Poetry Prize); Tiller North (winner, 2017 National Indie Excellence Award, Sixteen Rivers Press); and Roots and Reckonings, a chapbook that speaks to the generational and native culture of her coastal Maine fishing village. Her work won the 2023 Morton Marcus Memorial Poetry Prize, a Maine Literary Award, and the William Matthews Poetry Prize among other awards. In addition to her MFA at Sarah Lawrence, Lane earned a 2nd master’s and PhD in sustainable architecture at UC Berkeley. She splits her time between her native home in coastal Maine and the San Francisco Bay Area where she lives with her wife. rosalane.com
About Patrick Donnelly, Gregory Orr wrote “everything he writes is suffused with tenderness and intelligence, lucidity and courage.” Donnelly is the author of five books of poetry, most recently Willow Hammer (Four Way Books, 2025), and Little-Known Operas (Four Way Books, 2019). Nocturnes of the Brothel of Ruin (Four Way Books, 2012), was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. Donnelly is Program Director of The Frost Place, Robert Frost’s old homestead in Franconia, NH, now a center for poetry and the arts, as well as Director of The Frost Place Poetry Seminar. Donnelly’s translations with Stephen D. Miller of classical Japanese poetry were awarded the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature by Columbia University. Donnelly’s other awards include a U.S./Japan Creative Artists Program Award, an Artist Fellowship from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and an Amy Clampitt Residency Award. A former Poet Laureate of Northampton, Massachusetts, Donnelly’s poetry explores topics like same-sex love and desire and the AIDS epidemic with lyric strategies. patrickdonnellypoetry.com
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