Poet Lore, America’s oldest poetry journal and The Writer’s Center welcomes poet Chet’la Sebree to our monthly Virtual Poetry Book Club for a discussion of her collection, Blue Opening. Chet’la is joined by Book Club Host, Hannah Grieco.
We encourage you to order a copy of the book from your local, independent bookseller or online » directly from the publisher, Zando.
FREE & open to the public. RSVP below.
An essayist and poet from the Mid-Atlantic, Chet’la Sebree is the author of the debut essay collection TURN (W)HERE: A Geography of Home as well the poetry collections Blue Opening, longlisted for PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry and a finalist for both the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Poetry; Field Study, winner of the 2020 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets; and Mistress, nominated for an NAACP Image Award. She’s an assistant professor at the George Washington University and serves as a faculty mentor in Randolph College’s MFA in Creative Writing program.
About Blue Opening
“A profound poetic talent.”—Ada Limón
Blue Opening, Chet’la Sebree’s brilliant, illuminating poetry collection, grapples with origins—of illness, of language, of the universe—as the speaker contemplates whether she, too, can be a site of origin through motherhood. Navigating chronic health challenges alongside grief and questions about the nature of knowledge and religion, she searches personal history and the cosmos for answers to the unknowable.
With startling clarity and vivid tenderness, Blue Opening calls into question not only where to begin, but how to create, across thirty-two poems that press the fluid boundaries of form through sonnets, prose poems, odes, and two unforgettable poetic sequences. As the speaker traverses loss, possibility, and the choice, or often the lack of choice, in the direction of her future, she determines to press forward even as she is “unsure of what shape this language should take / and hulling, from blue rock, faith.”
About Book Club
This is no run-of-the-mill book club. Visiting writers will read excerpts, join the discussion, and answer your questions about craft, process, the publishing industry, and getting advice for our own writing! We’ll hang and eat snacks with the authors and escape your doomscrolling.
Poetry Book Club will meet on Zoom every second Wednesday of the month with a new poet.
Fiction Book Club will meet every third Sunday of the month in person at The Writer’s Center with a new author.
Come build community and read amazing books that the Big 5 didn’t have the sense to publish!
If you need an accommodation for this event, please contact us at access@writer.org. We will attempt to fulfill all requests, but advance notice is necessary to arrange for some accessibility services.
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