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Writers & Readers: Ravi Shankar
$5 or FREE for members
An evening with acclaimed poet Ravi Shankar who will launch his new book Deepening Groove, winner of the 2009 National Poetry Review Prize. Three notable authors Joel Allegretti, Suzanne Frischkorn and Lisa C. Taylor will join Shankar each reading from their new works.
Writers and Readers is a social gathering for people who love books. Readings will be preceded and followed by an informal discussion providing an opportunity to talk with others interested in reading, writing and thinking.
Connecticut Poet Laureate Dick Allen will introduce Deepening Groove and has hailed Shankar as “one of America’s finest younger poets.”
Deepening Groove is a collection of poems comprised of detailed observations about the natural world and the human condition. Many of the poems are set in New England, where Shankar lives. Poems from the collection have been featured by the Academy of American Poets and have appeared in the journals Blackbird, Barrow Street, Fulcrum, The Mississippi Review and Slope.
Some praise for Deepening Groove:
"The poems in Deepening Groove proceed in elegant triplets that drift effortlessly down the page on waves of sound, serenely self-confident. The subjects are animals, trees, flowers, fish, the weather, and the human condition, all mixed up in a heady stew that simmers quietly one minute, and shimmers brightly the next. This is a book of savvy, delicious surprises." -Wyn Cooper, author of the New Calm.
Bio:
Ravi Shankar is founding editor and Executive Director of Drunken Boat, an international online journal of the arts, and Co-Director of Creative Writing at Central Connecticut State University. He has published five other books and chapbooks. Along with Tina Chang and Natalie Handal, he edited W.W. Norton's Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from Asia, the Middle East & Beyond, called "a beautiful achievement for world literature" by Nobel Laureate Nadine Gordimer. He has won a Pushcart Prize, a Connecticut Commission on the Arts grant, appeared in the New York Times and the Chronicle of Higher Education, and has performed his work around the world, including on NPR and on the BBC. He currently teaches in Fairfield University's MFA Program and in the first international MFA Program at City University of Hong Kong.