THIS IS A PAST EVENT
The IU Southeast Library is proud to host world-renowned poet Carolyn Forché for a reading and craft talk.
This event is free, and open to the public.
Ms. Forché’s work as a poet, translator, and anthologist, has focused on “The Poetry of Witness”- an art that observes and responds to extreme circumstances: war, torture, imprisonment, exile, and oppression. Her work has earned many prestigious awards, including the Yale Younger Poets Series Award and the Windham-Campbell Award, which is one of the most highly-prized recognitions in the world of poetry.
In addition to her own volumes of poetry, Ms. Forché has edited major poetry anthologies, including Against Forgetting: Twentieth Century Poetry of Witness (Norton).
Ms. Forché’s forthcoming book What You Have Heard is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance (Penguin) is a memoir that recounts the experiences that shaped her life as an artist.
What You Have Heard is True is a devastating, lyrical, and visionary memoir about a young woman's brave choice to engage with horror in order to help others. Written by one of the most gifted poets of her generation, this is the story of a woman's radical act of empathy, and her fateful encounter with an intriguing man who changes the course of her life.
Carolyn Forché is twenty-seven when the mysterious stranger appears on her doorstep. The relative of a friend, he is a charming polymath with a mind as seemingly disordered as it is brilliant. She's heard rumors from her friend about who he might be: a lone wolf, a communist, a CIA operative, a sharpshooter, a revolutionary, a small coffee farmer, but according to her, no one seemed to know for certain. He has driven from El Salvador to invite Forché to visit and learn about his country. Captivated for reasons she doesn't fully understand, she accepts and becomes enmeshed in something beyond her comprehension.
Together they meet with high-ranking military officers, impoverished farm workers, and clergy desperately trying to assist the poor and keep the peace. These encounters are a part of his plan to educate her, but also to learn for himself just how close the country is to war. As priests and farm-workers are murdered and protest marches attacked, he is determined to save his country, and Forché is swept up in his work and in the lives of his friends. Pursued by death squads and sheltering in safe houses, the two forge a rich friendship, as she attempts to make sense of what she's experiencing and establish a moral foothold amidst profound suffering. This is the powerful story of a poet's experience in a in a country on the verge of war, and a journey toward social conscience in a perilous time.
For more information about Ms. Forché’s poetry check her page on the Poetry Foundation website, where you can read (and listen) to her work and find biographical and critical information: