Salem State University and the Salem Athenaeum present the eighth Salem Poetry Seminar, a week-long event for students at public colleges and universities in Massachusetts. In addition to the classes on poetry writing, the Seminar has a public component: free readings that feature an established poet and include brief readings by seminar participants.

Today’s featured poet:

January Gill O’Neil is the author of three collections of poetry, Underlife, Misery Islands, and Rewilding. Misery Islands won the Massachusetts Book Award for Poetry in 2015. Her work has appeared in American Poetry Review, Harvard Review, Ploughshares and The New York Times Magazine. She was Executive Director of the Massachusetts Poetry Festival from 2012-18, and she will be the John and Renee Grisham Writer-In-Residence at the University of Mississippi in 2019-20.