Rick Barot Reading
On Tuesday, April 20th, The Rose O’Neill Literary House invited poet Rick Barot to a reading of some poems from his new book “The Galleon.” The reading was accompanied by an ASL interpreter for both readings and the Q&A afterwards. Rick Barot is acclaimed for his award winning books The Darker Fall, which won the Kathryn A. Morton Prize, Want, the 2009 Grub Street Book Prize, and Chord for the 2016 UNT Rilke Prize, the PEN Open Book Award, and the Publishing Triangle’s Thom Gunn Award. He attended college at Wesleyan University and the Writer’s Workshop at the University of Iowa. Barot read several poems including older works and more recent poems from “The Galleons,” giving the audience background to the inspiration behind each reading. During the Q&A, Barot was eager to answer any questions the student crowd had, believing firmly in student engagement and discussion as a professor. Barot shared the complex and difficult emotions behind his poems, raising questions about race, struggling lives, and perseverance. His Literary House visit has been long in the making and it was well worth the wait.
