The Big Read Kicks Off Tonight! More Events on Saturday

Thursday, October 1

6:00pm - 8:00pm Kick Off for The Big Read
Mary Norton Clapp Library, Occidental College
1600 Campus Road, Los Angeles, CA 90041

Join Oxy, our community partners and special guests to launch The Big Read with poetry reading by the Oxy community, a message from Robinson Jeffers to Oxy recorded in 1955. The night marks the opening of "Robinson Jeffers and the Ecologies of Poetry" exhibit featuring a wide selection of rare Jeffers artifacts, photos, and books, works of Oxy and local poets and works by Los de Abajo Printmaking Collective on the theme of water, exhibits on North Los Angeles ecology. Big Read t-shirts will be available, and donations for these shirts will support the Wildlife Waystation.

Saturday, October 3

1:00pm – 2:00pm Jeffers Poetry presented by George Hart
Vroman's Bookstore
695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91101

In poetry of great scope and precise detail, Robinson Jeffers discovered the divinity of nature as it is understood by modern science. Jeffers documented his discoveries in thrilling and violent “verse novels,” set in California’s coastal mountains, and meditative lyric poems that express an environmental secular faith that is still relevant today. Presented by George Hart, Associate Professor of English at California State University, Long Beach and Co-editor of Jeffers Studies.

3:00pm - 4:30pm Poetry Reading by Los Angeles Poetry Festival
Eagle Rock Branch, Los Angeles Public Library
5027 Caspar Avenue, Los Angeles, 90041

"The Deer Lay Down Their Bones:” Poems by and in the spirit of Robinson Jeffers. California poets will read Jeffers’ poetry and their own responses. Led by Suzanne Lummis of the Los Angeles Poetry Festival and featuring Sarah Maclay, Carine Topal, William Archila, Brendan Constantine with special guest poets Charlotte Innes and Terry McCarty.