Poetry Reading by Joanna Fuhrman and Suzanne Buffam

Joanna Fuhrman is currently teaching in the creative writing program at Rutgers. Fuhrman is the author of four volumes: Pageant (Alice James Books, 2009), Moraine (Hanging Loose Press, 2006), Ugh Ugh Ocean (Hanging Loose Press, 2003) and Freud in Brooklyn (Hanging Loose Press, 2000). “Fuhrman is a leader in the particular, in ‘infra-surrealism.’ She taboos nothing; no form impedes her complete wit. This full poetry is not only ‘feminine, marvelous, and tough,’ but subtle, searching, and wounded-sexual, social, and smart. Fuhrman celebrates new truth-telling, an art of the spectacular pageant.” David Shapiro

Suzanne Buffam is currently teaching in the creative writing program at The University of Chicago, Buffam’s first collection of poetry, Past Imperfect (House of Anansi, 2005), won the Gerald Lampert Award for the best first book of poetry published in Canada in 2005, and was named one of 2005’s Books of the Year by the Globe and Mail. Her most recent collection is The Irrationalist, (Canarium Books, 2010). “Buffam’s often deadpan tone is like a magical dustpan that sweeps up the strangest observations and ideas, all worlds to themselves. Her ‘Little Commentaries’-‘On Pinatas,’ ‘On Fountains,’ and ‘On Vanishing Acts’ (to name only a few)-are absolute gems, kin to Anne Carson’s town poems and Yoko Ono’s Grapefruit. Buffam’s poems tug at new corners of the brain. They’re marvelous.” Matthea Harvey