Nathaniel Mackey in Columbia City

Nathaniel Mackey is an American poet, novelist, anthologist, literary critic, editor and Professor of Literature at Duke University in North Carolina. SPLAB welcomes him for only his second reading in Seattle and his first since 1994 as part of the SPLAB Visiting Poets Series.

At 7PM on Friday, March 11, 2011, he’ll read prose from his new epistolary novel: From a Broken Bottle Traces of Perfume Still Emanate and answer questions from the audience and UW-Bothell Professor Jeanne Heuving. The event is at the Northwest African-American Museum at 2300 S. Massachusetts St. and is being co-presented by the CD Forum. Admission is $5.

At 7:30PM on Saturday, March 12, 2011, he’ll read poems from Splay Anthem, as well as new work not yet published. Splay Anthem won the National Book Award for poetry in 2006. The reading is at SPLAB, at 3651 S. Edmunds in the Cultural Corner of the former Columbia School. The suggested donation is $5. There is some parking on-site and SPLAB is three blocks from the Columbia City Link Light Rail Station.

Mackey’s poetry combines African mythology, African-American musical traditions, and Postmodernist poetic experiment. His several ongoing serial projects explore the relationship of poetry and historical memory, as well as the ritual power of poetry and song.

Co-sponsors include: 4Culture, Poets & Writers, Seattle Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs, Richard Hugo House, CD Forum, the Shirley Marvin Hotel and WESTAF.

More About SPLAB:

A non-profit, 501(c)(3) corporation since 1993, SPLAB is an intergenerational writing Performance, Resource and Outreach center dedicated to Poetry, Story-telling, Conversation, Debate, Consciousness and Building community through shared experience of the spoken and written word.

More About Mackey:

...Mackey's series of improvisatory jazz-inspired fictions locates a ground between invention and listening that he defines as the source of culture itself. All culture, for Mackey, is a form of listening to what "we" are collectively improvising.
- Barrett Watten

A Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets, he has been editor and publisher of Hambone since 1982. Born in 1947 in Miami, Mackey obtained his B.A. from Princeton and his PhD from Stanford. His poetry books include Four for Trane (1978); Septet for the End of Time (1983); Eroding Witness (1985), which was selected for the National Poetry Series; Outlandish (1992); School of Udhra (1993); Song of the Andoumboulou: 18-20 (1994); Whatsaid Serif (1998) and Splay Anthem (2006).

Awards: 2006 National Book Award in poetry, for Splay Anthem, 2007 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award, 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship

Mackey has published four volumes of an ongoing prose project entitled, From A Broken Bottle Traces of Perfume Still Emanate (2010); Bass Cathedral (2008), Atet A. D. (2001), Djbot Baghostus's Run (1993) and Bedouin Hornbook (1986). He is author of Discrepant Engagement: Dissonance, Cross-Culturality, and Experimental Writing (1993), an influential book of literary theory, and more recently of Paracritical Hinge: Essays, Talks, Notes, Interviews (2004). He has edited the avant-garde literary journal Hambone for more than 15 years, and co-edited Moment's Notice: Jazz in Poetry and Prose with Art Lange (1993).