News

Rita Dove in Conversation with Jordan Kisner on Literary Hub's "Thresholds" Podcast

October 13, 2021

University of Chicago Presents: Music from Copland House and Susan Graham – A Standing Witness

October 07, 2021

Rita Dove's "Postlude" Featured in The New York Times Magazine

October 05, 2021

Rita Dove on WNYC's All Of It with Alison Stewart

October 04, 2021

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Rita Dove to be featured on Season 11 of "Finding Your Roots"

August 15, 2024

NEWS RELEASE

PBS has announced that Rita Dove will be a featured guest on Season 11 of Henry Louis Gates' popular ancestry show Finding Your Roots, which will begin airing in January 2025.

You can view the trailer on the "Finding Your Roots" Facebook page.

Additional photos by Fred Viebahn.
Rita Dove featured at Poetas Di(n)versos in Spain

May 27, 2024

Rita Dove recently read her poetry in A Coruña, Galicia, Spain, introduced and translated into Galician by 2023 Spanish National Poetry Prize (Premio Nacional de Poesía) winner Yolanda Castaño. Rita's part of the evening begins approx. 40 minutes into the video stream. (Photo and video courtesy Yolanda Castaño.)
Rita Dove at Amelia Island Chamber Music Festival

April 06, 2024

On April 6, 2024 Rita Dove read a selection of Beethoven & Bridgetower poems from her 2009 book Sonata Mulattica at the Amelia Island Chamber Music Festival in Florida. Her reading was followed by a beautiful rendition of Ludwig van Beethoven's Sonata for Violin and Piano in A Major Op. 47 (traditionally known as the Kreutzer Sonata), which had been premiered by Afro-European violin virtuoso George Polgreen Bridgetower in Vienna, Austria in 1803 with the composer at the piano. Festival director and pianist William Ransom, professor of music at Emory University, teamed up with violinist Njioma Grevious, Juilliard graduate and Sphinx Competition winner, for an extraordinary concert.
Rita Dove received 2024 Thomas Robinson Prize for Southern Literature

February 23, 2024

On Feb. 23, 2024 Mercer University’s Spencer B. King Jr. Center for Southern Studies awarded the 2024 Thomas Robinson Prize for Southern Literature to former Poet Laureate of the United States Rita Dove.

“The litany of awards and accolades Rita Dove has received testify to the singular fact that she is one of the most important writers in American letters,” said Dr. David A. Davis, chair of the Robinson Prize Committee. “As a poet, she is a virtuoso of form, capable of bending verse to her will, capturing melody without notes and rhythm without drumbeats. Her true importance, though, lies in the subjects she explores in her poems. She uses her verse to tell the stories of people overlooked by history, humble people, such as her grandparents who left the South to settle in the Midwest. These stories are vital to the narrative of the United States, and Professor Dove tells them with the majesty they deserve.”

The Thomas Robinson Prize, previously known as the Sidney Lanier Prize, was first awarded in 2012 to Ernest Gaines, and most recently -- in 2023 -- to Percival Everett. The prize is awarded to writers who have engaged and extended the long, often complicated, tradition of writing about the South. More information about it and the Feb. 23 event can be found here.
UVA Arts to present song cycle by Rita Dove and Richard Danielpour

January 29, 2024

From UVA Arts, Jan. 29, 2024:

UVA Arts will present A Standing Witness, a powerful and provocative song cycle collaboration between Grammy Award-winning composer Richard Danielpour and Pulitzer Prize-winner, former U.S. Poet Laureate, and UVA faculty member Rita Dove on Thursday, March 21 and Saturday, March 23 at 7:30 PM at Old Cabell Hall. The piece will feature internationally renowned mezzo soprano Susan Graham along with the acclaimed chamber ensemble Music from Copland House.

A Standing Witness is a 75-minute-long cycle of 14 songs and one instrumental elegy that is a sweeping retrospective of momentous events and eras in American history over the past half-century from the perspective of an observer who has seen it all yet is not revealed until the epilogue. By highlighting and remarking upon historic events ranging from the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy to Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, Woodstock, 9/11 and more, Dove challenges audiences to truly consider what it is to be an American with this collection of “songs you need to hear” (Opera News) that Vermont Public Radio has said has “the potential to become one of the most influential compositions of the century.”

The song cycle was written by Danielpour, one of the most gifted and sought-after composers of his generation, for Susan Graham, hailed as “America’s favorite mezzo” by Gramophone, and “an artist to treasure” by the New York Times. Graham rose to the highest echelons of the classical world within years of her debut, mastering an astonishing range of repertoire and genres along the way. Her operatic roles span four centuries, from Monteverdi’s Poppea to Sister Helen Prejean in Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking, which was written especially for her. A familiar face at New York’s Metropolitan Opera, she also maintains a strong international presence at such key venues as Paris’s Théâtre du Châtelet, Santa Fe Opera and the Hollywood Bowl.

Music from Copland House, the resident ensemble at Aaron Copland’s National Historic Landmark home in New York, is known for uniting past and present, and the American and non-American, as it journeys through 150 years of musical legacy to perform everything from nineteenth century works to contemporary compositions. Lauded by The New Yorker as “bold,” “adventurous,” and “superb,” the ensemble includes flutist Carol Wincenc, clarinetist Benjamin Fingland, violinist Siwoo Kim, violist Melissa Reardon, cellist Alexis Pia Gerlach, and pianist Michael Boriskin.

More information, including interviews with Rita Dove about A Standing Witness, can be found at The Daily Progress and UVA Today. Performance times and ticket information can be found here.
New Rita Dove poem inscribed on garden wall at Folger Shakespeare Library

January 30, 2024

On January 30, the Folger Shakespeare Library, an independent research library on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. and holder of the world's largest collection of the printed works of William Shakespeare, announced it will reopen on Friday, June 21, 2024 after extensive renovations. As a part of those renovations, three artists were commissioned to create works that reflect the Folger’s mission and offer visitors creative entry points through which to consider Shakespeare and the early modern world. Included among these is a poem written by Rita Dove that is now inscribed upon the garden wall along the path that leads visitors down to the Folger’s new west entrance from East Capitol and 2nd St. SE.

“I have such a deep love for the Folger Shakespeare Library,” Dove said. “Just walking into the space, what it did to my sensibility and how it helped to refresh my soul. I wanted to recreate that feeling that I had every time I walked into the Folger, so that if someone were to be reading any portion of the poem as they walked in, it would help to guide them.”

Barbara Bogaev of the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast interviewed Rita Dove about her process of writing the poem; the transcript of that interview can be viewed here. The full text of the poem can be viewed at this link, and you can find more information about the Folger reopening here. Read The New York Times' profile of the Folger renovation here.
Rita Dove receives Leadership Award from Academy of American Poets

January 24, 2024

On Wednesday, January 24, the Academy of American Poets presented its Leadership Award to Rita Dove, faculty member in the University of Virginia's English department since 1989, at Trinity Wall Street in New York City. It was the Academy's first public in-person event since 2019 and the onset of the Covid pandemic. Together with publishing house W. W. Norton, as well as the philanthropists William I. Campbell and Jonathan Plutzik, Professor Dove was honored for her advocacy of poets and poetry across the nation.

“As we enter our ninetieth year and look toward the future of our organization, we acknowledge the members of our community who have gone above and beyond for the cause of poetry,” said Ricardo Alberto Maldonado, Academy president and executive director. "It is doubly momentous to honor American poet extraordinaire Rita Dove alongside her visionary publisher W.W. Norton & Company for their mutual roles in expanding the realm of contemporary American poetry to be even more imaginative, dazzling, and impactful."
New critical study of Rita Dove's poetry published

November 10, 2023

The latest scholarly publication about Rita Dove's work, Towards Post-Blackness: A Critical Study of Rita Dove's Poetry by Lekha Roy, has been published by Peter Lang. More information, including author information and a book synopsis, can be found at this link.
Rita Dove and Richard Danielpour premiere new song cycle at Skidmore College

September 29, 2023

On Sept. 29, 2023 Skidmore College's Arthur Zankel Music Center saw the world premiere of Rita Dove's and Richard Danielpour's new song cycle, The Unhealed Wound. An introductory video can be viewed via this link.
Rita Dove honored with the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters

November 15, 2023

From The Los Angeles Times, Nov. 15, 2023:

National Book Award finalist and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Rita Dove was honored with the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. "The poet is called upon to use words like stepping stones to carry herself and her readers across that unarticulated turbulence, the unwarranted depths within us," Dove said while accepting her award. "Granted, that's pretty frightening stuff, which may be why many people are wary of poetry, afraid they won't understand it the right way."

"In today's endangered intellectual climate, my cynical self might say that it's why the woefully growing list of censored and banned books in American schools and libraries includes relatively little poetry. Unless that commercial success breaks the ears of those reactionary book burners, who rather than risk being asked to explain what exactly it is that strikes them as dangerous in our stances, have left us to our corner of the sky hoping that no one can hear us above their shouts. But we keep on strumming our harps."

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Rita Dove received the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters as only the fourth poet in the cross-genre lifetime achievement category's history, joining Gwendolyn Brooks (1994), Adrienne Rich (2006) and John Ashbery (2011). Her acceptance speech as well as LaVar Burton's and Jericho Brown's introductions can be watched and heard here.
Rita Dove receives 2023 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, the National Book Foundation's lifetime achievement award

September 08, 2023

Rita Dove has been named as the recipient of the 2023 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, the National Book Foundation's lifetime achievement award, to be celebrated at the National Book Awards ceremony in New York on November 15. She is only the fourth poet to be so honored, after Gwendolyn Brooks in 1994, Adrienne Rich in 2006, and John Ashbery in 2011.

Here are the links to the National Book Foundation's press release and to the Associated Press article.
Rita Dove's essay featured in BON APPETIT

August 11, 2023

Here is Rita Dove's culinary take on a dessert recipe, with her essay about a related experience in the Sinai desert in 1979. From the September print issue of BON APPETIT.
New York Times features interactive "close read" interpretation of Rita Dove's "American Smooth"

August 04, 2023

On August 4, 2023, The New York Times published Dwight Garner's brilliant interactive "close read" interpretation of Rita Dove's poem "American Smooth".

It's the third time that the NYT included poetry in its "Closer Look at Art" series, after Elizabeth Bishop's "One Art" in 2021 and W.H. Auden's "Musee des Beaux Arts" in 2022.
Rita Dove's "Museum" Reviewed in Adroit Journal

March 31, 2023

The April 2023 issue of ADROIT JOURNAL carries, under the title "Second Acts: A Second Look at Second Books of Poetry", Lisa Russ Spaar's enlightened review of Rita Dove's 1983 collection Museum. Worth reading -- visit this link for more!
Rita Dove Joins Board of the American Academy of Arts and Letters

April 11, 2023

In January 2023 Rita Dove joined the governing board of the venerable American Academy of Arts and Letters for a three year term. On April 11 she attended her first in-person board meeting at the Academy's headquarters in New York City. Previously she had taken on major responsibilities in national organizations when she sat on the board of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs from 1985 to 1988 (serving as AWP's president in 1986/87), was a senator of Phi Beta Kappa from 1994 to 2000 and a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 2006 to 2012.
Retrospective: Rita Dove Interview with Joumana Haddad

April 25, 2023

Lebanese writer and scholar Joumana Haddad spoke with Rita Dove at length for an interview that is now included in Haddad's collection of conversations, En busca de los ladrones del fuego: Entrevistas con grandes escritores del mundo, which was published in Spain a year ago today. Besides Rita Dove, it contains interviews with international greats Paul Auster, Umberto Eco, Peter Handke, Paulo Coelho, Mario Vargas Llosa, José Saramago, Yves Bonnefoy, Antonio Tabucchi, Nedim Gürsel, Elfriede Jelinek, Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, and Tahar Ben Jelloun. Visit this link for more information and to order this title!
Rita Dove: Selections Available via Poetry Foundation

April 03, 2023

A good "poem sampler" dedicated to Rita Dove's work, interspersed with intriguing notes and interpretations, was just published by the Poetry Foundation. Visit this link for the full post!
Rita Dove's Recent Books Now Available in Spanish

May 03, 2023

On the occasion of this year's Granada International Poetry Festival in Spain, Valparaiso Ediciones published a complete translation of Rita Dove's Playlist for the Apocalypse under the title Canciones para el apocalipsis, translated by Pedro Larrea. (Two years ago Valparaiso Ediciones had already published, also in Larrea's translation, her massive Sonata Mulattica - A Life in Five Movements and a Short Play.) A video of Rita and Pedro reading from Playlist / Canciones at Federico Garcia Lorca's birthplace in April 2023 can be found via this YouTube link.

More information on the Spanish publications of these two books can be found via this link.

Also, the Spanish edition of Rita Dove's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1986 masterpiece Thomas and Beulah, translated by Márgara Averbach for Universitat de València Publicacions, is available at this link.
Rita Dove Featured with Safiya Sinclair for T Magazine's "Legends and Heirs"

May 03, 2023

The New York Times's T Magazine recently released their "Legends and Heirs" series, pairings of women in different stages of their careers, each who inspired the other. Here is the profile of Rita Dove and Safiya Sinclair: Two Poets Who Debated Every Syllable
Rita Dove Interviewed for The Paris Review -- out now!

May 01, 2023

Kevin Young, poet and current director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, interviewed Rita Dove for The Paris Review's Spring 2023 issue (out now). Below is an excerpt; visit this link to get full access!

I first encountered Rita Dove in Essence magazine, where I learned that she’d won the 1987 Pulitzer for her book Thomas and Beulah (1986)—the first Black poet to be so awarded since Gwendolyn Brooks nearly four decades before. As a Black high schooler in Kansas who wrote poetry, or tried to, I distinctly remember wondering why no one had come to my door to inform me personally of this achievement—though I suppose the magazine, which then published poetry in its pages, had in fact done as much.

Thomas and Beulah was a revelation. Written in lines musical, freighted, and precise, Dove’s sequence of poems about her grandparents’ marriage is shadowed by the Great Migration, World War II, and the civil rights movement. That book’s grand theme—the intimacy of history—courses through Dove’s oeuvre, starting with her debut, The Yellow House on the Corner(1980), and 1983’s Museum, a powerful collection that includes a poem called “Parsley,” which tells of the Dominican Republic leader Rafael Trujillo’s mass murder of Haitians on the pretext of “a single, beautiful word.” Dove’s ability to evoke a deadly dictator with irony and complexity is reminiscent of Milton’s sympathy for the devil in Paradise Lost or W. H. Auden’s damning “Epitaph on a Tyrant.”

Dove’s first four books of poetry appeared at three-year intervals, a pace that slowed only slightly with Mother Love (1995) and On the Bus with Rosa Parks (1999). Both refract her experiences of parenthood—she and her husband, the writer Fred Viebahn, have a daughter, Aviva—and of serving as the United States poet laureate, a role she occupied from 1993 to 1995, and which she transformed from what was once simply called the consultant in poetry into the prominent position it is today. Those early volumes, intertwined much as Lucille Clifton’s are, add up to an everyday epic that tells of the ways that public history is created through private lives—especially Black ones, which is still a revolutionary idea. Along the way, Dove finds kin in a variety of figures: an unnamed “House Slave,” sideshow performers in Berlin, Billie Holiday and Hattie McDaniel, Persephone and Demeter, a trickster “Spring Cricket.” She has also written several proper epics, including the symphonic Sonata Mulattica (2009), about the violinist George Bridgetower, the original dedicatee of Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata and, in Dove’s reimagining, a nexus from which to examine music, memory, racism, and underappreciated talent. As she writes of Holiday: “If you can’t be free, be a mystery.”
"Vacation" Featured in UVA's "Thoughts from the Lawn"

March 01, 2023

Lifetime Learning is honored to highlight three poems from Rita Dove. "Vacation" is the March offering; visit this link for access to the poem!
"Chocolate" Featured in UVA's "Thoughts from the Lawn"

February 13, 2023

Lifetime Learning is honored to highlight three poems from Rita Dove. "Chocolate" is their February offering; please visit this link to access the poem!
"Exit" Featured in UVA's "Thoughts from the Lawn"

January 19, 2023

Lifetime Learning at UVA is honored to highlight three poems from Rita Dove on their blog Thoughts from the Lawn. "Exit" is featured this month (January 2023). To see the post, please visit this link!
Rita Dove Awarded Bobbitt Prize for Lifetime Achievement

November 15, 2022

The Library of Congress will award the 2022 Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry to former U.S. Poet Laureate Rita Dove for lifetime achievement and to Heid E. Erdrich for her poetry collection “Little Big Bully.”

The poets will receive their honors and read selections from their work on Thursday, Dec. 8, at 7 p.m. during Live at the Library at the Thomas Jefferson Building. The reading is free and open to the public. Free timed-entry passes are required to enter the Thomas Jefferson Building. Timed-entry passes will provide entry to the author program in Room LJ-119.

The 2022 Bobbitt prizes were awarded for the most distinguished book of poetry published in the preceding two years, 2020 and 2021, and for lifetime achievement in poetry. Erdrich’s book was published by Penguin Books in 2020. Dove is the author of 11 books of poetry, most recently “Playlist for the Apocalypse: Poems,” published by W. W. Norton and Company in 2021. The 2022 prize marks the 17th time the award has been given.

For more information, please visit this link!
Rita Dove Wins Library of Virginia Award!

October 17, 2022

Rita Dove, Carolyn Eastman and Jocelyn Nicole Johnson were the top winners at the 25th Annual Library of Virginia Literary Awards on Saturday.

Best-selling author Adriana Trigiani hosted the celebration, with Virginia author and culinary historian Michael W. Twitty as the featured speaker.

The Pulitzer prize-winning poet and former poet laureate Rita Dove won the poetry award for her book "Playlist for the Apocalypse," her first volume of new poems in 12 years. Dove is the Henry Hoyns Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Virginia.

For more information about the Awards ceremony, including the full list of winners, please visit this link!
Virginia Literary Awards Panel Discussion: Poetry featuring Rita Dove

October 06, 2022

Virginia author and executive director of James Madison University's Furious Flower Poetry Center Lauren K. Alleyne moderates a discussion with poetry award finalists Sandra Beasley, author of "Made to Explode"; Rita Dove, author of "Playlist for the Apocalypse"; and Tina Parker, author of "Lock Her Up."

The winners will be announced during the 25th Annual Virginia Literary Awards Celebration in person at the Library of Virginia (Richmond, VA) on Saturday, Oct. 15, 2022.
Rita Dove Honored with Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize for Lifetime Achievement

September 08, 2022

The Poetry Foundation is proud to announce the winners of the 2022 Pegasus Awards, a family of literary prizes that include the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Young People’s Poet Laureate, and the Pegasus Award for Poetry Criticism. The winners will be honored at an awards ceremony in Chicago in October.

In recognition of Poetry magazine’s 110th anniversary, the Poetry Foundation has decided to award 10 additional Ruth Lilly Poetry Prizes this year, resulting in $1,132,500 in prizes distributed to the 2022 winners. It is the greatest prize amount that the Foundation has ever awarded to a cohort of living poets at one time.

“We’re celebrating 110 years of Poetry magazine this year, and approaching 20 years of the Poetry Foundation in 2023. We wanted to do something special to mark these milestones by honoring an outstanding cohort of writers whose work has brought comfort and inspiration to so many,” said Poetry Foundation president, Michelle T. Boone. “Poetry shows us the way forward, and there is no poetry without the imagination and talent of those behind the pen.”

Honoring 11 Living Legends
The Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize is annually awarded to one living US poet with an award of $100,000 in recognition of their outstanding lifetime achievement; it is one of the most prestigious awards given to American poets, and one of the nation’s largest literary prizes.

In honor of the 110th anniversary of Poetry and in alignment with the goals announced in its new Strategic Plan, the Poetry Foundation is awarding 11 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prizes in 2022. The decision not only commemorates a historic milestone for the Foundation and magazine, but celebrates a diversity of backgrounds and styles from poets whose contributions to culture warrant the same recognition afforded to artists in other forms.

For more information, including the full list of honorees, please visit this link.
Sun Valley Writers' Conference Talk by Rita Dove Now Available to Stream

August 26, 2022

Rita Dove's "A Poetry Reading," one of two readings she gave at the Sun Valley Writers' Conference (SVWC), is now available to stream on the SVWC website! To access, please visit svwc.com and click on "Watch & Listen" at the top of the page (note: you will need to fill out a brief form before you can access the video).
Rita Dove Nominated for Library of Virginia Award

August 17, 2022

Nine finalists, including Pulitzer Prize winner and former U.S. Poet Laureate Rita Dove, have been selected for the 25th annual Library of Virginia Literary Awards.

The awards honor Virginia writers and their contributions to literature. The finalists were chosen by an independent panel of judges from more than 108 submissions.

The winner in each category will be selected from among the finalists and announced during a celebration at the Library of Virginia on Oct. 15.

“We are thrilled to celebrate diverse works by Virginia authors or about Virginia topics for the 25th year,” said Librarian of Virginia’s Sandra Treadway. “This event has become a highly anticipated annual tradition for both book lovers and authors enthused about recognizing literary excellence in our commonwealth.”

For the full list of nominees, please visit this link.
Rita Dove Awarded Honorary Doctor of Letters from the University of Iowa

May 18, 2022

On May 13, 2022, Rita Dove received an honorary Doctor of Letters from the University of Iowa, where she received her MFA in 1977 (Iowa Writers Workshop). It's her 29th honorary degree to date! The full graduate doctoral commencement ceremony is now available on YouTube; Ms. Dove receives her honor beginning at 10:50.

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Henry Hoyns Professor of Creative Writing