Celebrate Catherine Barnett and Jason Koo as they each read from their fourth full-length poetry collections: Solutions for the Problem of Bodies in Space (Graywolf, 2024) and No Rest (Diode Editions, 2024). The pair will discuss metaphysics, grief, and what new poetic territory they’ve breached in their most recent books.

Readings in Kray Hall with a reception to follow in the Viscusi Reading Room. Books will be available for purchase before and after the reading. We have a 70-person capacity, so please RSVP early.

About the Poets:

Catherine Barnett is the author of four poetry collections, including Solutions for the Problem of Bodies in Space; Human Hours (Believer Book Award, New York Times “Best Poetry of 2018” selection); The Game of Boxes (James Laughlin Award); and Into Perfect Spheres Such Holes Are Pierced (Beatrice Hawley Award). A Guggenheim and Civitella Ranieri fellow, she received a 2022 Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a Whiting Award, among other recognitions. Her work has been published in the New Yorker, The NY Review of Books, The Yale Review, The Nation, Harper’s, American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. She teaches in NYU’s MFA Program and works as an independent editor.

Jason Koo is a second-generation Korean American poet, educator, editor and nonprofit director. He is the author of four full-length collections of poetry: No Rest, a winner of the Diode Editions Book Contest, More Than Mere Light, America’s Favorite Poem and Man on Extremely Small Island. His work has been published in Best American Poetry 2022, Missouri Review, Poetry Northwest, Village Voice and Yale Review, among other places, and won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Vermont Studio Center and New York State Writers Institute. He is an associate teaching professor of English and the director of creative writing at Quinnipiac University and the founder and executive director of Brooklyn Poets. (Photo by Autumn Driscoll).