Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Gregory Pardlo will speak at IU today.
He is a generous writer and an equally generous human being, Ruth Lilly professor and poet-in-residence Adrian Matejka said in an email.
“He recognizes that poetry is a living, malleable thing that’s best experienced aloud,” Matejka said. “I’m excited for my students and the IU community to get to hear his work and interact with him.”
Pardlo will read from his poetry collection “Digest,” for which he was awarded the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. The reading is free and open to the public.
Pardlo’s work was admired by the literary community before he won the prize, Matejka said in the Art at IU press release.
“Greg has the rare ability to be innovative and inviting at the same time,” Matejka said in the release. “Audiences can expect to hear a poet who is giving of himself and his art.”
His work covers topics such as parenting, race, socioeconomics and history, according to the release.
Pardlo did not start his career as a poet.
After a five-year break from college, he worked at a Danish restaurant and ran a blues and jazz bar with his grandfather in New Jersey.
He began writing poetry as an English major at Rutgers University-Camden, and received a master’s degree in English from New York University.
He published his first poetry collection, “Totem,” in 2007.
“His poetry is thoughtful, conscious of the myriad layers of American history, and simultaneously of the moment,” Matejka said in an email.
“He is as comfortable writing meditations on the history of poetry as he is writing a poem about grocery shopping with his daughters in Brooklyn.”
Tracy K. Smith, another Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, said in a New York Times article Pardlo is “interrogating the everyday.”
Matjka said the description strikes him as true.
Matejka said he invited
Pardlo to speak at IU
because of his poetry and attitude toward young artists and readers.
“Professor Pardlo’s
excellent book, Digest, won the Pulitzer Prize, which is among the most prestigious literary awards in the world,” Matejka said in an email.
“That would be enough to want to get him here. But the fact that he’s enthusiastic about meeting and dialoguing with young writers and readers is equally important.”
