Lecturer in Creative Writing Idra Novey, author of the acclaimed 2023 novel Take What You Need, discusses her new poetry collection Soon and Wholly with fellow creative writing faculty members and poets Ilya Kaminsky and Monica Youn.
Soon and Wholly faces the complexities of life on a swiftly heating earth and brings a lyric intimacy to the extremes of our era. The poems juxtapose sweltering days raising children in a city with moments from a rural childhood roaming free in the woods, providing a bridge between those often polarized realities. Novey’s spare, contemporary fables move across the Americas, from a woman housesitting in central Chile, surrounded by encroaching fires, to a man in New York about to give birth to a panda.
Other poems return to the Allegheny Highlands of Appalachia, where Novey revisits the roads and creeks of her childhood: “Maybe we knew we only appeared/to be floating, but soon and wholly/we’d go under.” Like Lydia Davis and Anne Carson, Novey draws from the well of her work translating myriad authors, from Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector to Iranian poet Garous Abdolmalekian, and from her own award-winning novels. These are deeply lived poems, evoking both a singular life and the shared urgencies of our time, a collection of great inventiveness and wit, conjuring our “bit part in the history of the future.”
This event is cosponsored by Labyrinth Books, The Princeton Public Library, and Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts and Humanities Council.
About the Guests
Idra Novey is the author of Take What You Need, a New York Times Notable Book of 2023 and finalist for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, and two other novels. Her second poetry collection Exit, Civilian was chosen by Patricia Smith for the National Poetry Series. Her fiction and poetry have been translated into a dozen languages and she’s written for The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and The Guardian. She is a lecturer in creative writing at the Lewis Center for the Arts.
Ilya Kaminsky is the author of Deaf Republic and Dancing In Odessa and has co-edited and co-translated many other books, including Ecco Anthology of International Poetry. His many honors include The Los Angeles Times Book Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Metcalf Award. He is a professor of creative writing at the Lewis Center for the Arts.
Monica Youn is the author of From From and three previous poetry collections: Blackacre, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; Barter; and Ignatz, a finalist for the National Book Award. For 2024-25, Youn is a visiting professor of creative writing at the Lewis Center and the Theodore H. Holmes ’51 and Bernice Holmes Visiting Poet at Princeton.
Admission & Details
The event is free and open to the public; no tickets required.
Directions
Get directions to Labyrinth Bookstore, located at 122 Nassau Street in Princeton.
Accessibility
Labyrinth Books is an accessible venue. Visit our Venues and Studios section for accessibility information at our various locations. Guests in need of access accommodations are invited to contact the Lewis Center at 609-258-5262 or email LewisCenter@princeton.edu at least one week in advance of the event date.
