April 21: Three Collegeville Institute Poets March 3, 2021 By Event Details Date: Wednesday, Apr 21st, 2021, 12:00 pm Categories: Collegeville Connections Celebrate National Poetry Month with a reading by three poets affiliated with the Collegeville Institute. Award-winning poets Angela Alaimo O’Donnell, Shann Ray, and Betsy Johnson will read from their recent collections. All three are alumni of our summer writing programs and contributors to Bearings Online. In these times, we’re able to bring them together despite locations on the East Coast, Midwest, and West Coast. Take a coffee break and enjoy some poetry with the Collegeville Institute! Wednesday, April 21, 2021 12 – 1 PM, CDT Did you miss this event? Watch a recording below: Resources mentioned: Betsy Johnson’s yoga website and author newsletter Purchase Betsy Johnson’s latest book of poetry titled Animals Being Animals “She Had Some Horses” by Joy Harjo Shann Ray’s website Purchase Shann Ray’s latest book of poetry titled Atomic Theory 7: Poems to My Wife and God “Atomic Theory 7” by Shann Ray was published on Bearings Online “I am afraid to own a body” by Emily Dickinson Angela Alaimo O’Donnell’s website Purchase Angela Alaimo O’Donnell’s latest book of poetry titled Andalusian Hours: Poems from the Porch of Flannery O’Connor An interview with Angela Alaimo O’Donnell by Susan Sink on Bearings Online about Flannery O’Connor and race A recent article in America about poetry and spirituality includes Shann Ray’s book and Angela Alaimo O’Donnell’s book Angela Alaimo O’Donnell, PhD is a professor, poet, and writer at Fordham University in New York City and serves as Associate Director of Fordham’s Curran Center for American Catholic Studies. Her publications include two chapbooks and six collections of poems, most recently, Andalusian Hours (2020), a collection of 101 poems that channel the voice of Flannery O’Connor. In addition, O’Donnell has published a prize-winning memoir, Mortal Blessings (2014), a book of hours based on the prayer life of Flannery O’Connor, The Province of Joy (2012), and her biography Flannery O’Connor: Fiction Fired by Faith (2015) was awarded first prize for excellence in publishing from The Association of Catholic Publishers. Her new critical book on Flannery O’Connor, Radical Ambivalence: Race in Flannery O’Connor was published by Fordham University Press in 2020. Betsy Johnson has published three books of poetry, and her work has appeared in Commonweal, The Iowa Review (online), Prairie Schooner, and Alaska Quarterly Review. Garrison Keillor read two of her poems on The Writer’s Almanac, and her meditations have been downloaded over 80,000 times on Insight Timer. She teaches in the English and Communication departments at the College of Saint Benedict/Saint John’s University. She is a certified yoga instructor and has her own yoga website. Shann Ray is an American Book Award winner and his work has appeared in Poetry, Esquire, McSweeney’s, The American Journal of Poetry, Diode, Bearings, Poetry International, Narrative, Prairie Schooner, and Salon. He spent part of his childhood on the Northern Cheyenne reservation in southeast Montana, played professional basketball in the German Bundesliga, and has served as a scholar of leadership and forgiveness studies in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas. He has been granted fellowships from the NEA and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and won the High Plains Book Award in poetry and fiction. Ray is the author of 7 books, most recently Atomic Theory 7: poems to my wife and God, a project in collaboration with the painter Trinh Mai. Ray lives in Spokane and teaches at Gonzaga University.
