POETRY@TheBreman Featuring Ilya Kaminsky and Katie Farris
// William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum
Menu
Search

POETRY@TheBreman Featuring Ilya Kaminsky and Katie Farris

POETRY@TheBreman Featuring Ilya Kaminsky and Katie Farris
Apr 18 2023 | 7:00 PM - 8:00 PM

POETRY@TheBreman Featuring Ilya Kaminsky and Katie Farris

LIVE AT THE BREMAN

WHEN: April 18th at 7:00PM
WHERE: The Breman Museum or Virtually Via Zoom
 
 
 
The Breman Museum will present poets Ilya Kaminsky and Katie Farris in a program coinciding with Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) at 7PM Tuesday, April 18, 2023.
 
Jewish poet Kaminsky has been an important voice on the Russian-Ukrainian conflict since Russia invaded his homeland a year ago and We Lived Happily During the War -- the first poem from his collection Deaf Republic, a finalist for the 2019 National Book Award in poetry -- went viral.
“Poetry now is as necessary as ever — not because it is pretty or fancy but because it helps us to articulate the most impossible moments: It gives us a gasp, a scrap of air in our lungs,” he told Atlanta Magazine last year. “When we have nothing else, we can still hold a handful of words in our memory, a tune, and that might be all we have got now to survive — we don’t know yet. But if we are lucky, it is there, stored in our memories.”
 
Kaminsky, whose reading on April 18 will include We Lived Happily During the War, was selected by the BBC as one of the “12 artists that changed the world” in 2019. Meanwhile, his wife, poet Katie Farris, has been immersed in a struggle of a more personal sort, with breast cancer.
 
“Katie’s war zone is her own body,” Kaminsky told Atlanta Magazine. “Her bravery and her ability to find music and vivid imagery and stories from the intensity of her waiting is so much more crucial than mine can ever be. I am watching her in awe.”
 
In her poem Why Write Love Poetry in a Burning World, published late last year on Granta.com, Farris wrote,
Why write love poetry in a burning world?
To train myself, in the midst of a burning world
to offer poems of love to a burning world.
Farris and Kaminsky will do a book signing, including Farris’ just-published collection Standing in the Forest of Being Alive, following their reading.
 
“On Yom HaShoah, as we remember and mourn the 6 million European Jews lost amid the horrors of the Holocaust, The Breman will also take measure of contemporary struggles, both political and personal,” said Breman Executive Director Leslie Gordon. “Poets can help us make sense and, as Ilya Kaminsky has said is his mission, to witness and share ‘lyricism in the whirl of our griefs.’”
 
Farris and Kaminsky are former residents of Atlanta, where he served as the Bourne Chair in Poetry at Georgia Tech and the director of Poetry@Tech. Kaminsky joined Princeton University as a professor of creative writing in January. Farris, a former Georgia Tech associate professor of literature, media and communication, is a visiting associate professor at Princeton.

Related Events

No related events.

Other Events

  • December 10th, 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM

    Unforgettable Stories From The Holocaust

    Holocaust survivor and Breman Museum speaker, Ben Walker presents his remarkable story of resilience at this free presentation. Seating is limited - reserve your seat today.

  • December 10th, 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM

    An Evening of Light with Cantor Gideon Zelermyer

    Cantor Gideon Zelermyer leads a family-friendly celebration of music from around the Jewish world: pop, Broadway, classical and liturgical, including the music of his friend and collaborator, Leonard Cohen. Gideon Zelermyer has performed around the world as a featured soloist.

Exhibitions

  • The Guiding Hand : An exhibition of Torah pointers

    We are pleased to present an important and intriguing exhibition of Torah pointers, objects central to Jewish prayer and ritual. Known by their Hebrew name, yads, these ceremonial yet practical instruments are used to keep one’s place in the Torah scroll when reading from its densely hand-lettered Hebrew text. The Guiding Hand: The Barr Foundation Judaica Collection of Torah Pointers is on view in The Breman’s newly updated Discovery Gallery from October 11 through December 2023.

  • History with Chutzpah : Stories of The Southern Jewish Adventure

    The 250+ artifacts, documents, photographs and oral histories in the exhibition, reveal stories from the generations before us and offer you a journey into Jewish culture unlike any other.

View All >
The Breman Museum1440 Spring Street, NW Atlanta, GA 30309678-222-3700
© 2023 William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum.     Privacy Statement  |  Terms Of Use

This website is supported by a generous gift from the Jerry and Dulcy Rosenberg Family in honor of Elinor Rosenberg Breman.

Jewish Federation
Login