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Poets of Presence Conference
All are invited to join the Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry Conference.
Watch Keynote Presentation by Christian Wiman!
Presence is a community of writers who recognize Catholicism as fertile ground for the flourishing of contemporary poetry. The October conference will consist of a series of panels and workshops that will explore how poetry navigates the intersection of matter and spirit, depicts the struggle between belief and doubt, and engages faith-- precisely by being surprised by it, taking joy in it, and even finding humor in it.
This In-Person Conference and Workshop was held from October 27-28, 2023 at Loyola University Chicago's Water Tower Campus. The Keynote Address on 10/28 was delivered by Christian Wiman. You can watch Wiman's Keynote presentation using the link above.
Keynote Speaker Christian Wiman
Christian Wiman was raised in West Texas and earned a BA at Washington and Lee University. A former Guggenheim fellow, Wiman served as the editor of Poetry magazine from 2003 to 2013. He received an honorary doctorate from North Central College.
Poet, translator, editor, Wiman is the author of numerous books of poetry, prose, and poetry in translation. Survival Is a Style (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2020) is Wiman's most recent collection; the collection Every Riven Thing (2010) won the Commonwealth Prize from the English-Speaking Union, was a finalist for the Kingsley-Tufts Poetry Award, and was named one of the New Yorker’s top 11 poetry books of 2010. His collection, Once in the West (2014) was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award. His debut collection, The Long Home (1998), won the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize. Stolen Air (2012) contains Wiman’s translations of Osip Mandelstam’s poetry. With Don Share, Wiman coedited The Open Door: One Hundred Poems, One Hundred Years of Poetry Magazine (2012). Wiman’s essay collections include He Held Radical Light: The Art of Faith, the Faith of Art (2018), My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer (2013) and Ambition and Survival: Becoming a Poet (2007).
Wiman has taught at Stanford University, Northwestern University, Lynchburg College, and Yale Divinity School. He lives in New Haven, Connecticut.
Speakers
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Angela Alaimo O’Donnell, PhD is a professor, poet, literary critic, and writer at Fordham University in New York City. She is also the Associate Director of Fordham’s Curran Center for American Catholic Studies. Her publications include two chapbooks and eight full-length collections of poems, among them Andalusian Hours (2020), a collection of 101 poems that channel the voice of Flannery O’Connor, and Love in the Time of Coronavirus: A Pandemic Pilgrimage (2021). O’Donnell has published a memoir, Mortal Blessings; a book of hours based on the practical theology of Flannery O’Connor, The Province of Joy; and a prize-winning biography Flannery O’Connor: Fiction Fired by Faith. Her critical book on Flannery O’Connor Radical Ambivalence: Race in Flannery O’Connor was published by Fordham University Press in 2020. O’Donnell’s most recent poetry collection, Holy Land (2022), won the Paraclete Poetry Prize. O’Donnell's eleventh collection, Dear Dante, poems written in conversation with Dante’s Commedia, will be published in spring of 2024. http://angelaalaimoodonnell.com/ |
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Mary Ann Buddenberg Miller is professor of English at Caldwell University in Caldwell, New Jersey, and founding editor-in-chief of Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry, an annual professional print poetry journal that publishes new poems and translations, interviews, book reviews and essays on poetry informed by the Catholic faith. She is editor of St. Peter's B-list: Contemporary Poems Inspired by the Saints (Ave Maria Press, 2014), the Fall 2019 selection by America Magazine’s The Catholic Book Club. She frequently teaches a Catholic Writers of literature course and a Journal Editing class that engages interested students in the process of reading submissions to Presence. |
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Susan L. Miller is the author of Communion of Saints: Poems (Paraclete Press, 2017.) She has had poetry and prose published in Commonweal, The Iowa Review, Literature and Medicine, Meridian, The Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, Sewanee Theological Review, and in many other journals. She also has poems in Collective Brightness: LGBTIQ Poets on Faith, Religion, and Spirituality (Sibling Rivalry Press), St. Peter's B-List: Contemporary Poems Inspired by the Saints (Ave Maria Press), and the forthcoming anthology Reflection on the Pandemic: COVID and Social Crises in the Year Everything Changed (Bucknell University Press). She teaches creative writing as an Associate Teaching Professor at Rutgers University and is currently researching death in twentieth century Mexican art and culture. She lives with her family in Brooklyn, NY. |
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Paul J. Pastor is an award-winning writer, editor, and author of several books, most recently, Bower Lodge: Poems. Drawing on his wide-ranging experience as a journalist, magazine editor, premium freelancer, working poet, and editor, Paul has worked to empower writers at all phases of their careers, ranging from debut poets to multiple New York Times bestselling nonfiction authors. Presently serving HarperCollins as Senior Acquisitions Editor for Zondervan Books, Paul is also a candidate for Master of Fine Arts in Poetry at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas. He lives in Oregon with his wife Emily, a classically-trained fine artist, and their three children. |
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Jeannine M. Pitas is the translation co-editor of Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry. She is the Spanish-English translator or co-translator of twelve books by authors from Latin America with a particular focus on Argentine and Uruguayan women writers. Her most recent translation is A Sea at Dawn by Uruguayan poet Silvia Guerra, co-translated with Jesse Lee Kercheval and published in 2023 by Eulalia Books. She is also the author of two books of poetry: Or/And (Paraclete Press 2023) and Things Seen and Unseen (Mosaic Press 2019). She lives in Pittsburgh, teaches at Saint Vincent College, and is about to join the editorial staff of Eulalia Books, a small press dedicated to publishing poetry books by writers from around the world whose work has not yet been published in English. |
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Mark S. Burrows has been editing poetry for the past several decades. He served as Poetry Editor for Paraclete Press in the 2010s and recently became Poetry Editor for Wildhouse Publications, a new press in Boston devoted to publishing for “the spiritually adventurous.” In that capacity, he oversaw the press’s recent “con/verge/nces” Chapbook Contest, judged by Jane Hirshfield. Since 2007 he has also edited poetry for the journal Spiritus. An award-winning poet and translator of German poetry, he is the recent author (with Jon Sweeney) of Meister Eckhart’s Book of Darkness and Light: Meditations for the Journey on the Wayless Way (Hampton Roads, 2023) and The Wandering Radiance: Selected Poems of Hilde Domin, the first bilingual edition of one of Germany’s most celebrated post-war poets. He is on the “core faculty” of the MFA in Creative Writing at Seattle Pacific University. After spending most of the last decade as a university professor for Religion and Literature in Bochum, Germany, he now lives and writes in Camden, Maine. www.soul-in-sight.org |
Poets of Presence: Faith, Form & Forging Community
A full program for the conference can be found here: Poets of Presence Conference Program Below is an outline of the schedule of events found in the full program.
Friday, Oct. 27: Francesca’s on Chestnut
5:30 p.m. -- Cocktails and Dinner (Francesca's)
Welcome: Michael Murphy (Hank/LUC)
8:00 p.m. -- Poetry Reading (Francesca's)
Welcome and Facilitation: Mary Ann Miller
A mix of poets from all issues of Presence will read one of their own poems from the journal (or their own book) and a poem by another poet from any issue of the journal.
Saturday, Oct. 28: Water Tower Campus
8:30 a.m. -- Check-In
Light breakfast with readings of poetry by some of the panelists and workshop leaders:
Susan L. Miller, Angela Alaimo O'Donnell, Paul J. Pastor, and Jeannine M. Pitas
9:00-11:00 -- Concurrent Workshops
- Sonnet and other forms: Angela Alaimo O'Donnell (Fordham) Beane Hall
- World into Word: Forging Faith into Poetry: Susan L. Miller (Rutgers) Regents Hall
11:30 - 1:00 -- Lunch Plenary (Beane Hall)
The Forge & the Fire: God in the Blacksmith Shop: Angela Alaimo O'Donnell (Fordham)
1:15 - 2:15 -- Presentations
- Success: Writing a Winning Book Proposal with Mark Burrows (Wildhorse Publications) - Beane Hall
- Finding Your Personal Publishing Strategy: How to Focus Your Time and Energy: Paul J. Pastor (Harper/Zondervan) - Regents Hall
- Words Across Cultures: On Translating Poetry and Publishing Poetry in Translation: Jeannine M. Pitas (Presence Journal) - TBA
2:15 -2:30 -- Break
2:30- 3:30 -- Concurrent Workshops
- Success: Writing a Winning Book Proposal with Mark Burrows (Wildhorse Publications) - Beane Hall
- An Editor's Secrets for Successful Submissions: Paul J. Pastor (Harper/Zondervan) - Regents Hall
- Translation Pitch Session: An Opportunity to Receive Feedback on Draft Poems in Translation: Jeannine M. Pitas (Presence Journal) - TBA
3:30 - 5:15 -- Break
5:15 -- Vigil Mass (Holy Name Cathedral)
6:30 -- Heavy hors d'oeuvres / drinks
7:30 -- Keynote Lecture: “The Art of Faith and the Faith of Art.” Christian Wiman (Yale University)
