Rick Barot (CRF 2011), a Tacoma writer who is the poetry editor for New England Review and director of The Rainier Writing Workshop, an MFA program in creative writing at Pacific Lutheran University, will speak about “The Personal and the Political” at Vashon Center for the Arts’ next Arts & Humanities Series lecture. The talk will focus on poetry’s role as a catalyst for redress, resistance and consciousness.
The talk will take place at 4 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 27, at VCA, and focus on personal response to tumultuous times, and poetry’s role as a catalyst for redress, resistance and consciousness. The work of poets Lucille Clifton, Danez Smith, Layli Long Soldier and others whose works pivot between the personal and the political, and the private and historical, will be examined.
Barot, who was born in the Philippines and grew up in the San Francisco Bay area, has published three volumes of poetry — “The Darker Fall” (2002), “Want” (2008), which was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and won the 2009 Grub Street Book Prize, and “Chord” (2015), all published by Sarabande Books. “Chord” received the UNT Rilke Prize, the PEN Open Book Award and the Publishing Triangle’s Thom Gunn Award. It was also a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize. Barot’s work has also appeared in The New Republic, Poetry, The New York Times Magazine, Tin House, The Kenyon Review, The New Yorker and two editions of the “Best American Poetry” series.