Join us on Saturday, December 21st from 1:00-2:30PM in the 1956 Workshop as we round out a wonderful year focused on the theme of rhythms with award winning Philadelphia-based poet Jena Osman. Jena Osman has authored numerous poetry collections, with her latest collection A Very Large Array (2023) spanning three decades of poetic and intellectual exploration.
At WEM, the solstice marks a time for reflection, meaningful conversation, and community. Jena Osman’s poetry is grounded in historical and archival materials that she transforms into new forms of storytelling that shed light on our present moment. The selection of works Jena Osman will be reading draws our attention to the rhythms of history and locale, while asking us to think critically about the rhythms of our daily lives today. Osman’s poetry covers topics from the Mummers, Philadelphia statuary, and Walt Whitman’s phrenology readings to the history of physiology, photography, and capturing human rhythms. Questions and conversation with the poet will be interspersed throughout the reading.
The Studio will be open in the half-hour leading up to the reading in the 1956 Workshop beginning at 1:30. Light fare and refreshments will be provided!
Ticket Details:
$25 per person
$20 for WEM members – Join or renew today to purchase your ticket at this special price!
*This event takes place in the 1956 Workshop and includes light refreshments as well as an open house in Esherick’s Studio.
About Jena Osman:
Jena Osman’s books of poems include Motion Studies (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2019), Corporate Relations (Burning Deck, 2014), Public Figures (Wesleyan University Press, 2012), The Network (Fence Books 2010, selected for the National Poetry Series in 2009), An Essay in Asterisks (Roof Books, 2004) and The Character (Beacon Press, winner of the 1998 Barnard New Women Poets Prize).
Osman was a 2006 Pew Fellow in the Arts, and has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, The Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the Howard Foundation, and the Fund for Poetry. She has been a writing fellow at the MacDowell Colony, the Blue Mountain Center, the Djerassi Foundation, and Chateau de la Napoule.
She founded and edited the award-winning and internationally recognized literary magazine Chain with Juliana Spahr for twelve years; Osman and Spahr now edit the occasional ChainLinks Book series together.
Osman received an M.A. in poetry and playwriting from Brown University, and a Ph.D. in English from the Poetics Program at the State University of New York at Buffalo. She teaches in the MFA Creative Writing program at Temple University in Philadelphia.