The poetry of Major Jackson and Didi Jackson

The Rochester Public Library will host an evening of poetry with two special guests, Major Jackson, and Didi Jackson, on Saturday, Oct. 1, at 6 p.m.

Didi and Major Jackson will read new and selected poems from their latest volumes inspired by Vermont’s natural landscape and seasons. The Jacksons are Rochester residents and Vanderbilt University Professors.

Didi is the author of Moon Jar (Red Hen Press, 2020). Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Kenyon Review, New England Review, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. Jackson’s poems have been selected for the Best American Poetry Series and Poem-a-Day by the Academy of American Poets. She is the recipient of the Robert H. Winner Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America. She is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Vanderbilt University.

Major is the author of five books of poetry, most recently The Absurd Man (Norton, 2020). A recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, Major has been awarded a Pushcart Prize and a Whiting Writers’ Award.

He is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in the Humanities at Vanderbilt University. He serves as the Poetry Editor of The Harvard Review.

The evening is co-sponsored by The Bookery, and copies of the Jackson’s books will be available for purchase.