The Hemingway Center Reading Series presents: Peter Gizzi

The Hemingway Center Reading Series and Creative Writing MFA Program present poet Peter Gizzi, winner of the T.S. Eliot Poetry Prize.

"Gizzi is not a sentimental poet―not even close. His best poems exist on a different plane, as if he has achieved and is writing from a transcendent vantage most of us only strive forHe identifies the thing we're all searching for in voices, in poems, in language, in songs; why we read and why we listen."―Amanda Petrsich, The New Yorker

Event Details

At 7:30 PM on Friday, March 13, 2026, Gizzi will give a reading of his work, followed by a Q and A and book signing. Free and open to the public, the Hemingway Center Reading Series brings renowned writers to campus each year.

About Peter Gizzi

Peter Gizzi's recent books include, "Fierce Elegy" (Wesleyan, 2023), "Now It's Dark" (Wesleyan,
2020), and "Archeophonics" (Wesleyan, 2016). In 2020 Carcanet published "Sky Burial: New and
Selected Poems" in the UK. His honors include fellowships from The Rex Foundation, The Fund for
Poetry, The Foundation for Contemporary Arts, The Guggenheim Foundation, and The Judith E.
Wilson Visiting Fellowship in Poetry at the University of Cambridge. In 2018 Wesleyan brought out
"In the Air: Essays on the Poetry of Peter Gizzi." He teaches poetry and poetics in the MFA Program at
the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. In 2025, Gizzi won the prestigious T.S. Eliot Poetry Prize.

Praise for Peter Gizzi

"Having read Peter Gizzi's work through the immense and singular wingspan his books make, I am still awestruck and dumbfounded as to how these poems are made. This book believes in language. It also offers it the utmost reverence: by lowering it to human height, where the living are. What a masterwork of deft maneuvering within the dynamo Gizzi has made of the lyric."―Ocean Vuong, author of Time is a Mother

"With his last several collections, Peter Gizzi has distinguished himself as one of America's finest living poets. In his latest book, Fierce Elegy, we find the poet writing at the height of his powers."―James O'Connor, Harvard Review


"Gizzi's poetry is 'silly with clarity', infused with a restless vernacular that can elevate the mundane while making the impossible tangible."―Publishers Weekly

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Co-hosted with: College of Arts and Sciences

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