SELAH GRIFFIN, Opinion Editor—
The Beck Series is funded by the Harriet Ewens Beck Endowment for English. The series has been inviting writers for readings and teaching positions at Denison for over fifty years.
Its most recent installation this past Tuesday, October 25 welcomed poets Erin Belieu and Cate Marvin. Students and faculty laughed, contemplated, and listened as the award winning authors read their poetry aloud.
Erin Belieu is an author from Nebraska who earned her M.F.A. at The Ohio State University. Her work focuses on themes of feminism, love, family and more. Belieu’s poetry collections have been selected by The New York Times, the Washington Post, Publishers Weekly, the Los Angeles Times, and more for various awards and notable book nominations. She is a Rona Jaffe Foundation Fellow and has been awarded the Association of Writers & Writing Program’s George Garrett Prize. Her most recent book of poems, Come-Hither Honeycomb, was published in 2021.
“Love and death are at the heart of [Belieu’s] work,” said Ann Townsend ‘85, current Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing. “Her poems complicate our human desire for connection with an acute awareness of the ways he heard each other.”
Townsend introduced Marvin by saying, “When I read [her] poems, I sometimes feel slightly out of breath because of their headlong energy, their absolute propulsion, the way they move through the world, open to the changes that time can bring.”
Poet Cate Marvin has an M.F.A from both the University of Houston in Poetry and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in Fiction. Her latest poetry collection, Event Horizon, released in May 2022, speaks on misogyny and the female experience.
Marvin has been awarded the 2000 Kathryn A. Morton Prize, the 2002 Kate Tufts Discovery Prize, a Whiting Award, and more. She was the recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship and her book of poems, Oracle, was named one of “The Best Poetry Books of 2015” by the New York Times.
Together, Belieu and Marvin co-founded the the non-profit intersectional feminist literary organization VITA: Women in Literary Arts, in 2010.
Both poets read a variety of their work over a selection of their publications. The pieces from each author ranged from heartfelt, to funny, to energizing and captivated the audience’s attention.
“These sorts of things really show that you can live your life as a writer and still feed your kid and make your way in the world,” said Belieu about the Beck Series event.
“I hope that the students, like any reader, walk away with the feeling that they’ve connected with something, and that they may be inspired to write [about] themselves,” said Marvin.
The Beck Series will continue to welcome writers to Denison in order to share their work and persuade students of their passion and interest in writing. Essayist Melissa Faliveno will be the next guest featured in the Beck Series event.