Join us for an afternoon with Gregory Orr, who will read from his new poetry collection, We Interrupt This Broadcast. This in-person event will be free and open to the public. We recommend arriving early for the best seating.
About the Book: A stunning new volume from a poet whose body of work illuminates the ways “language can become a tool for carrying what feels unbearable” (Krista Tippet, On Being).
From a master lyric poet characterized by Mary Oliver as “a Walt Whitman without an inch of Whitman’s bunting and oratory” comes this late-life collection that takes its overall title from the venerable phrase that alerted listeners and viewers to an urgent event of public significance. Again and again, the poems in We Interrupt This Broadcast dramatize, in simple and deep language, what it feels like to be alive in our time.
The disconnects that haunt and animate these poems are political, ecological, and psychological. Some, like “Un-Earth: A Sequence,” revisit early trauma experienced both intimately and socially, while others contemplate our present ecological crises.
Set against this somber background of disconnects, Gregory Orr invokes the natural world and human intimacy as sources of growth and hope. Giving voice to both personal and universal anguish, We Interrupt This Broadcast repeatedly transforms desolation into celebration, silence and suffering into song.
About the Author: Gregory Orr is the author of fourteen collections of poetry and several books of prose, including The Blessings: A Memoir, A Primer for Poets and Readers of Poetry, and Poetry as Survival. He is professor emeritus at the University of Virginia, where he founded its MFA Program in Writing. He lives with his wife, the painter Trisha Orr, in Charlottesville, Virginia.
