TITLE: Poetry at Noon: The Air Poets
SPEAKER: Joyce Brinkman, Northbert Krapf, Ruthelen Burns, Joseph Heithaus
EVENT DATE: 12/09/2008
FORMAT: Video + Captions
RUNNING TIME: 34 minutes
TRANSCRIPT: View Transcript (link will open in a new window)
DESCRIPTION:
Former Indiana Poet Laureate Joyce Brinkman introduces a group of "Airpoets" whose poems were incorporated into stained-glass murals in the new Indianapolis International Airport that is scheduled to open later this year as part of the Library's Poetry at Noon series. The poets include Ruthelen Burns, Joseph Heithaus and the current Indiana Poet Laureate Norbert Krapf. Brinkman herself is an "Airpoet."
The work written by the "Airpoets," which was integrated into the new Indianapolis International Airport murals by artist Martin Donlin, was collected into a collaborative book titled "Rivers, Rails and Runways" (2008).
Speaker Biography: Joyce Brinkman, who served as Indiana poet laureate from 2005 to 2007, is the author of "Tiempo Espa??ol," which was written in Spain while she studied with the University of New Orleans MFA program. Brinkman also collaborated with glass artist Arlon Byliss to create lighted glass art containing her poetry that is now displayed at the Marion County Central Library in Indiana.
Speaker Biography: Indiana Poet Laureate Norbert Krapf's forthcoming book "Bloodroot: Indian Poems" is a collection of 175 poems written from 1971 to 2007. His collection "The Country I Come From" (2002) was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in poetry. Krapf grew up in Jasper, Ind. He is emeritus professor of English at the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University, where he taught for 34 years. He returned to Indiana in 2004.
Speaker Biography: Ruthelen Burns is a mixed-media artist and a poet, and has shown her work at Southern Methodist University, the Herron School of Art and the Indianapolis Art Center. Her work was also featured as part of a 2008 poetry exhibit on art pieces at the National Art Museum of Sport.
Speaker Biography: Joseph Heithaus is the author of a series of poems "Poison Sonnets," which won the 2007 Discovery/The Nation Prize. His work has appeared in Poetry, the North American Review, the African American Review and the Southern Review. Heithaus serves as chair of the English Department at DePauw University.
