Poets and scholars gather to pay tribute to the poet Elizabeth Bishop. She was born 100 years ago, yet Elizabeth Bishop’s poetry remains as fresh now as it was when she wrote it. “Her poetry speaks to many issues that are urgent today: gender identity, our difficult relationship to foreign cultures and postcolonial realities, the way that science and reason can sometimes do violence to the world,” says Bonnie Costello, a Boston University College of Arts & Sciences professor of English and author of *Elizabeth Bishop: Questions of Mastery*. Bishop, who died in 1979, is the subject of a centennial celebration. The event brings together 17 poets, critics, and editors, who read aloud some of Bishop’s best loved poems, including “In the Waiting Room,” “Sandpiper,” “Shampoo,” and “First Death in Nova Scotia.” Speakers at this centenary tribute include: Frank Bidart, Olga Broumas, Peter Campion, Dan Chiasson, Henri Cole, Bonnie Costello, Maggie Dietz, David Ferry, Erica Funkhouser, Jonathan Galassi, Melissa Green, Saskia Hamilton, George Kalogeris, Gail Mazur, Alice Quinn, Christopher Ricks, Peter Sacks, Mary Jo Salter, Lloyd Schwartz, and Meg Tyler.
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