Refugeography: A Reading With Slam Poet Bao Phi

Oct. 13, at 12:20 p.m. — The English lounge was packed with people sitting under a shroud of excited silence. They were all there for the Refugeography, Bao Phi’s introductory event to the Cornell community. Bao Phi, a Visiting Critic in the Department of Literatures in English for this academic year, has won the Minnesota Grand Slam twice, made it to the finals for the National Poetry Slam and has written three heavily awarded children’s books. After Bao Phi was introduced on stage, he confessed that this event would be his first time performing in-person since March 2020 — no one would have been able to realize.

Curating a Summer Reading List

If you, like me, are looking forward to some reading this summer, let’s embark on this ill-fated journey together. Will we achieve our reading goals? Almost certainly not. Will we still enjoy the act of resistance that is leisure in a society that values only productivity? We must — or perish.

‘In the Lateness of the World’: Witness to a Denouement

“In the Lateness of the World” is Forché’s most recent book, her first new collection of poetry in seventeen years. In it, she writes on subjects ranging from the global to the personal — from war-scarred history to a visitation to a lighthouse, from dawn over Paros to the death of a friend.