Events

An inno­v­a­tive pro­gram on the poten­tial force poet­ry can play as a tool in diplo­ma­cy was the focus at a read­ing and pan­el dis­cus­sion on poet­ry at NYU’s Lil­lian Ver­non Cre­ative Writ­ers House on 4 March 2016. Co-spon­sored by the UNSRC Soci­ety of Writ­ers, the NYU Gal­latin Writ­ing Pro­gram and Tisch School of the Arts Depart­ment of Arts and Pub­lic Pol­i­cy, the pro­gram was the brain­child of Hap­pi­ness the Delight-Tree co-edi­tor Dar­rel Ale­jan­dro Holnes, who teach­es at the NYU Gal­latin School of Indi­vid­u­al­ized Study. A full house on a Fri­day evening drew delight­ed com­ments from poets Nao­mi Shi­hab Nye and Meena Alexan­der whose read­ings top­i­cal­ly drew on their unique cul­tur­al her­itages and inter­na­tion­al expe­ri­ence as well as the impor­tance of hap­pi­ness in glob­al exchange.

In her open­ing remarks, UNSRC Soci­ety of Writ­ers Pres­i­dent Bhik­shu­ni Weis­brot quot­ed the late Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al Dag Hammarskjöld’s illu­min­ing com­ments on diplo­ma­cy and the writ­ten word. Co-edi­tor Eliz­a­beth Lara joined in the pan­el dis­cus­sion to pro­vide insight­ful ref­er­ences to the his­tor­i­cal role of poet­ry as a means to con­vey polit­i­cal vision, pol­i­cy rec­om­men­da­tion and diplo­mat­ic finesse.