Acclaimed poet Kevin Young will present a lecture entitled “How to Write a Hoax Poem” on Tuesday, October 21, at 4:30 p.m. at the Lewis Center for the Arts’ James M. Stewart ’32 Theater at 185 Nassau Street.
Is there such a thing as fake poetry? If so, how does one write it? By examining some of the more notable modern poetry hoaxes, we will glimpse a secret history of the poem as something conceived to tempt or even trick, going beyond mask or persona to the poem as a forgery of the first order. In understanding the ways the hoax works, we hope to know better our assumptions, habits, and hurts, and how to subvert them.
The event, the 2014-15 Theodore H. Holmes ’51 and Bernice Holmes Lecture presented by the Program in Creative Writing, is free and open to the public. Young is also the Holmes Visiting Professor in the Program in Creative Writing for 2014-2015.
