Andrew Joron and Julie Carr, two distinguished poets known for their experimental writing styles, host a reading at the Poetry Center this Thursday, Sept. 11.
SF State welcomed Joron as an assistant professor to the Creative Writing Department this fall. Joron said he knew the University was a good place to join the department.
“The program is nationally recognized, and it has deep roots in the poetry scene in the Bay Area,” Joron said. “It just feels natural for me.”
Joron has contributed to the poetry world with numerous books and poems. One of his latest books, “The Cry at Zero,” was recognized by Publisher’s Weekly, which called Joron, “among the most uncompromising, far-reaching, and underappreciated poets writing today.”
Joron transitioned from initially writing science fiction to writing poetry because he felt constrained by science fiction format.
“I just (needed) to break free in a certain way and travel to a zone where everything was open,” Joron said.
Joron wants to teach the affinities between poetry and philosophy while at SF State and hopes his students will try to figure out the world as if they were seeing it for the first time.
The University’s creative writing department is internationally known and associated with the American Poetry Archives, according to their website. In addition, Joron joins a faculty composed of other distinguished poet professors like Toni Mirosevich, Maxine Chernoff and Daniel Langton.
Julie Carr, who will join Joron in the poetry reading, is an associate professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder. She and her husband run Counterpath Press, a publisher founded in 2006 that published Joron’s book “The Cry at Zero,” as one of their first books.
“It was very exciting for (me and her husband), because we were huge fans of his, but didn’t know him before embarking on the project,” Carr said. “We were honored that he trusted us with his book.”
Carr will read poems from her most recent book, “RAG,” an extended poem on fragments that “interrogates modernity, grief, and violence through the recurring motifs and stirring imagery of childhood and urbanity,” according to Publisher’s Weekly.
Carr said she hopes to push her students’ intellectual curiosities to new levels, with enough inspiration to get them fired up to take on social and political issues.
Maxine Chernoff, the chair of the Creative Writing department, received an application from Joron after a nationwide search for someone with a specialty in poetry.
“I did know him a little from the Bay Area poetry scene and have always liked his interesting and complex poetry,” Chernoff said “It is wonderful that he has three other areas beyond poetry that we also teach and hope to expand.”
The poetry reading begins at 4:30 p.m. Sept. 11 in the Humanities Building, room 512.
