Contact: Fran Maas, Turning Points Lecture Series coordinator, (360) 650-7545, or e-mail: farn.maas@wwu.edu
BELLINGHAM - Western Washington University's Nancy Pagh will present "What's Cracking Up? Humor as Subversion in Poetry," as the final installment this academic year in WWU's Turning Points faculty lecture series, at 5:15 p.m., on Wednesday, April 15, in Communications Facility room 110.
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| Nancy Pagh |
| WWU photo |
Humor is an essential strand in Pagh's voice as a poet, but her poems aren't simply comic. In this presentation, she will discuss the ways that humor offers her entry into difficult subject matter. Reflecting on the work of some of her favorite poets, Pagh will discuss humor as a form of subversion that has been used in particularly interesting ways by women. How is humor created, how does it influence the relationship between the poem's speaker and her audience, and how do these poets avoid the stereotypically "feminine" trap of self-deprecating humor? Defensive humor can serve as a shield or deflection, but these poems disarm us and subvert resistance with surprise and wit. This presentation highlights writing that plays and provokes, without compromising the reader's intelligence.
Pagh's first book of poems, "No Sweeter Fat" (2007), won the Autumn House Press book award. Her chapbook "After" won the 2008 Floating Bridge Press prize and her work appears in numerous publications, including Prairie Schooner, Rattle, Poetry Northwest, Crab Creek Review, The Bellingham Review, Fourth River, and O magazine. She is a recipient of an Artist Trust Fellowship and was the 2008 D. H. Lawrence Fellow at the Taos Summer Writers Conference. An enthusiastic reader at Northwest venues, she was a featured poet at the Skagit River Poetry Festival and a headliner in the Gist Street Masters Series in Pittsburgh. Her first book, "At Home Afloat" (2001), is an academic study of the language women use when traveling at sea.
Pagh has taught at Western since 1995, with the exception of the 1997-98 academic year when she was a visiting professor at a global-studies program in New York. She teaches a wide range of courses on writing, literature, and cultural studies for the English Department and has also taught courses in the university Honors Program and Academy for Lifelong Learning.
For more information about the Turning Points Series faculty speaker series call (360) 650-7545 or visit http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~lectures/turningpoints.html.
For those attending Turning Points faculty lectures, no parking permit is required to park after 5 p.m. in the gravel lots 12A and the C lots south of the Communications Facility, near Fairhaven College. Parking meters require payment all hours.
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