Description
KEYNOTE ADDRESS: “The Word Dropped Like a Stone: Sacred Poetics Under the Reign of the Money God”
Interesting poetry awakens us, asks us to slow down our metabolization of language, to become aware of its materiality, how it enters into us. Sacred poetry, from antiquity to the present, teaches us to be comfortable sitting in mystery without trying to resolve it, to be skeptical of unqualified certitudes. In discussing poems across the centuries—from “Hymn to Inanna” to Szymborska—Akbar reminds us that language has history, density, complexity. Such poetry, Akbar says, becomes a potent antidote against an empire that would use “the raw overwhelm of meaningless language” to cudgel us into inaction.
About Kaveh Akbar
Kaveh Akbar’s poems appear in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Paris Review, Best American Poetry, and elsewhere. He is the author of two poetry collections: Pilgrim Bell (Graywolf 2021) and Calling a Wolf a Wolf (Alice James 2017), in addition to a chapbook, Portrait of the Alcoholic (Sibling Rivalry 2016). He is also the editor of The Penguin Book of Spiritual Verse: 100 Poets on the Divine (Penguin Classics 2022).
In 2020 Kaveh was named Poetry Editor of The Nation. The recipient of honors including multiple Pushcart Prizes, a Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellowship, and the Levis Reading Prize.
Kaveh was born in Tehran, Iran, and teaches at the University of Iowa and in the low-residency MFA programs at Randolph College and Warren Wilson. In 2014, Kaveh founded Divedapper, a home for dialogues with the most vital voices in American poetry. With Sarah Kay and Claire Schwartz, he wrote a weekly column for the Paris Review called “Poetry RX.”
Kaveh Akbar is known for his poetry, and now his 2024 debut novel Martyr! is garnering rave reviews:
“So stunning, so wrenching, and so beautifully written that reading it for the first time, I kept forgetting to breathe.”
— John Green
From previous San Miguel Writers’ Conference keynoters:
“I haven’t loved a book this much in years.”
— Tommy Orange
“Kaveh Akbar has given birth to a hilarious marvel of a novel. Rip-roaringly funny. Wise and wise-assed.”
— Mary Karr
By Kaveh Akbar:
