Robert Lowell Memorial Lecture Series
In the Spirit of Room 222
In the late 1950s, Robert Lowell led a workshop whose students included three younger writers: George Starbuck, Anne Sexton, and Sylvia Plath. This legendary group gathered in the same small, corner classroom where our creative writing workshops continue to meet. The Robert Lowell Memorial Lectures celebrate this legacy, and the thriving community of writers, teachers and students at Boston University, by bringing a distinguished poet to campus each semester to read alongside a recent graduate of the program.
The Robert Lowell Memorial Reading series is made possible due to the generous support of Fred Levin and his late wife Nancy Livingston (COM ’69). Thanks to Fred’s continuing support, the Lowell Memorial Reading Series takes place twice a year as it has since 2004.
The Spring 2024 Robert Lowell Memorial Lecture
Featuring Phil Schultz and Milica Mijatović
Thursday, March 7th at 7:30PM in the Boston University Hillel House River Room (4th Floor)
Photo Credit: Blue Flower Arts
Philip Schultz is the author of several collections of poetry, including Failure, winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize. His other collections include Luxury, The Wherewithal: A Novel in Verse, The God of Loneliness: New and Selected Poems, Living in the Past, and The Holy Worm of Praise. He is also the author of My Dyslexia and Comforts of the Abyss. His work has been published in The New Yorker, Partisan Review, The New Republic, The Paris Review, Slate, and other magazines. He is the recipient of a Fullbright Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry.
Milica Mijatović is a Serb poet, translator, and author of War Food (Southword Editions), winner of the 2022 Fool for Poetry International Chapbook Competition. Born in Brčko, Bosnia and Hercegovina, she relocated to the United States where she earned a BA in Creative Writing and English Literature from Capital University. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from Boston University and is a recipient of a Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship in Poetry. Her poetry appears or is forthcoming in Rattle, Salamander, Plume, The Louisville Review, Collateral, Santa Clara Review, Poet Lore, and elsewhere. Her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and she serves as Poetry Editor for Consequence.
Read below to see who has read for the Lowell series in the past!
(Photo by Blue Flower Arts)
Fall 2024: Major Jackson and Annette Frost
(Photo by Blue Flower Arts)
Spring 2023: John Murillo and Annaka Saari
Fall 2022: A.E. Stallings and Togara Muzanenhamo
Spring 2022: Tracy K. Smith and Kirun Kapur
Fall 2021: Gail Mazur and Aaron Caycedo-Kimura
Spring 2021: Peter Balakian and Susan Barba (Photo by Mark DiOrio)
Fall 2020: Natasha Trethewey and Megan Fernandes
Spring 2020: Naomi Shihab Nye and Katherine Hollander
Spring 2019: Mark Halliday and Heather Green
Fall 2018: Marilyn Chin and Tara Skurtu
Spring 2018: Jane Hirshfield and Natasha Hakimi
Fall 2017: Mark Doty and Tomas Unger
Spring 2017: Tom Sleigh and Laura Marris
Fall 2016: Rita Dove and Duy Doan