By Marissa Massare, Living and Arts Editor
Poet and author Kristina Marie Darling will visit Susquehanna on Oct. 9 as part of the Seavey Reading Series to give a reading from 7:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. in Weber Chapel Auditorium.
Darling’s upcoming reading is titled “Readerly Privilege and Textual Violence: An Ethics of Engagement.”
According to her website, Darling grew up in Tulsa, Okla. as a first-generation college student. Other than being the author of 30 books, including “DARK HORSE: Poems and Look to Your Left: The Poetics of Spectacle,” she also travels to different locations across the world to lecture on creative writing.
Darling has lectured at New York University, the Sorbonne Library in Paris, San Diego State University and at the Castle of Otranto in Italy.
Her poetry and essays have been featured in publications like The Gettysburg Review, The Kenyon Review, Ploughshares and The Harvard Review.
Darling considers herself as more than just an author. She also holds titles such as editor, publisher and critic. She currently serves as editor-in-chief of Tupelo Press, a non-profit literary press out North Adams, Mass., contributes as an opinion columnist at The Los Angeles Review of Books and is a staff blogger at The Kenyon Review.
In an interview with The American Literary Review, Darling mentions that she first thought of herself as a lyric poet.
“I definitely believed that there should be a connection between poetry and an authentic spoken voice,” Darling said. “I became interested in writing poems that allow multiple voices to coexist within the same narrative space. For me, poetry’s great appeal is in the potential for dialogue between found texts, and between different types of appropriated language.”
Darling also explores the limits we confine texts to.
“I’m very interested in challenging the limitations that we impose upon texts on the basis of their formal qualities. For example, readers often assume that creative writing and theoretical work are separate endeavors,” she said.
Before the reading at Susquehanna, Darling plans to visit English professor Laurence Roth’s book reviewing class to talk with students of all ages.
“I was also very glad that students in the book reviewing class will get to meet and talk with a working professional who can give them insight on the challenges of book reviewing today,” Roth said.
Creative writing professor Karla Kelsey reached out to Roth to inform him that Darling is also an active reviewer for the Los Angeles Review of Books.
She earned her master in philosophy from the University of Missouri and is currently working on her doctorate in poetics at SUNY Buffalo where she received a presidential fellowship.
Darling will join poet Sarah Rose Nordgren and Susquehanna English professor Matthew Neill Null as guest readers to visit campus this year, sponsored by Susquehanna’s Writers Institute at 7:30 on Nov. 6.