Poet, essayist and lyricist Mary Jo Salter will present readings from her work during the 24th annual B. Christopher Bothe Lecture at 7:30 p.m. March 25 in McDaniel Lounge. Working in a variety of literary genres, Salter has published as a poet, critic, editor, essayist, children's book author, and lyricist.
"As an internationally regarded poet, Salter practices an inventive use of traditional forms via contemporary topics," according to Kathy Mangan, professor and chair of the English department. "Her keen eye and astute ear make every poem a visual and aural reading pleasure."
Author of six books of poetry, Salter will read from her most recent book, "A Phone Call to the Future: New and Selected Poems."
Salter's poems have been published in numerous magazines, including The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, and The New Republic. She is a reviewer, essayist and a lyricist whose song cycle "Rooms of Light," with music by Fred Hersch, premiered at Lincoln Center in 2007. Her children's book, "The Moon Comes Home," was published in 1989 and her play, "Falling Bodies," premiered in 2004. She is also a co-editor of "The Norton Anthology of Poetry." In October, Knopf, publisher of all of Salter's books, will publish her edited collection, "The Selected Poems of Amy Clampitt."
In 2007, Salter joined faculty at Johns Hopkins University as a professor after 23 years of teaching at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. She is Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities as well as director of Graduate Studies for The Writing Seminars department at Hopkins. In addition to poetry workshops, in which she often concentrates on the uses of form, her recent undergraduate courses include Four American Women Poets: Dickinson, Moore, Bishop, Clampitt as well as The Poetry of War. Recent graduate courses examine the work of W.H. Auden, the modern sonnet and the parallel work of the expatriate poets Heaney, Walcott, and Brodsky.
The Bothe lecture brings a visiting writer to campus for one day to meet with student writers and to give a public reading and lecture. B. Christopher Bothe, a member of the Class of 1972, was a poet, award-winning journalist, and printer who died in 1984. Bothe's family and friends developed the lecture in his memory in 1987.
