The American poet A.E. Stallings, who was our Winter 2022 Special Commendation, has just been named the new Oxford Professor of Poetry. She follows in the footsteps of Alice Oswald and Simon Armitage in this prestigious role which dates back to 1708. If you're not familiar with her poetry then we highly recommend This Afterlife: Selected Poems which brings together selected poetry from her four acclaimed collections, Archaic Smile, Hapax, Olives, and Like. Many of these poems unfold in the mytho-domestic sphere, through the eyes of Penelope or Pandora, Alice in Wonderland or the poet herself: "The ancients taught me how to sound modern". The Underworld and the Afterlife, ancient history and the archaeology of the here and now, all slant rhyme with one another. An expert at traditional forms, Stallings also experiments restlessly throughout these fiercely witty, melancholy and wise poems. We look forward to hearing her public lectures and you can catch up on past lectures here.
A.E. Stallings is a U.S. born poet and translator who lives in Greece. She studied Classics and has published four volumes of poetry, plus three volumes of verse translation, including Lucretius' The Nature of Things and Hesiod's Works and Days with Penguin Classics. She won a Guggenheim fellowship, a MacArthur fellowship and was a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize.
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