It’s time to give the librarians a much-deserved break! The Poetry Center will be closed July 3 - July 20. See you July 21 on our return!
What to look forward to:
Summer Social: Jacinda Russell and Hannah Larrabee on Art, Poetry, and Language Erratics
Sunday, August 2, 2026 - 4:00pm to 6:00pm
This event will take place at the Century Room at Hotel Congress, 311 E. Congress St. Summer Socials are designed as interesting happy hour experiences. This event will feature complimentary snacks and a cash bar; doors at 4:00PM, program at approximately 4:30PM.
Join us for a conversation with conceptual artist Jacinda Russell and poet Hannah Larrabee as they highlight their upcoming exhibition at the Poetry Center. In Language Erratics, Russell and Larrabee collaborate on a series of ekphrastic responses capturing their experiences of The Arctic Circle Residency in the Svalbard Archipelago.
Language Erratics
In Language Erratics, Hannah Larrabee and Jacinda Russell explore a phenomenon of language that parallels the evolving Arctic landscape: the severing of words from what they mean in a warming world. In the poem “Arctic: Scenic Vista,” Larrabee writes: “I am trying / to only draw lines / with words,” and Russell re-envisions these words as lines in a photograph, breaking fragments apart and watching them slowly disappear with ice. This correspondence between poetry and photography engages the long history of ekphrastic art, with Russell’s visual compositions inspired by Larrabee’s poems about their experience during The Arctic Circle Residency in Svalbard in 2022.
Russell responded to thirteen of Larrabee's poems, freezing imagery, text, moss, and stones, then photographing them melting on top of significant backdrops. The temporality of the ice and the unpredictable nature of its dissipation adds to the erratic quality of each composition. As the collaboration progressed, the visual cues and responses journeyed further from the poems and Russell’s final response is only distant and tenuous—emulating erratics in New England woods, worlds away from the glacier that deposited them. In this sense, language and meaning become distorted, challenged by acceleration and the long cycle of geologic time, as they try to articulate this rapidly changing world.
Sealey Challenge Poetry Book Swap
Thursday, August 13, 2026 - 6:00pm to 8:00pm
This event will take place at Bar Crisol, 196 W. Simpson St.
Help celebrate the halfway point of the Sealey Challenge! Join us for an informal poetry book swap at Bar Crisol. Bring books you no longer want and pick up some new reading to keep your Sealey Challenge going or just keep you reading through the summer.