STANDING WITNESS AT CARNEGIE HALL! | Rita Dove

March 19, 2025

Last month the Los Angeles performance of composer Richard Danielpour's and poet Rita Dove's song cycle "Standing Witness" had to be canceled. Wondrously, however, a new venue opened up on the other side of the country! On April 16, the Orchestra of St. Luke's will present star mezzo-soprano Susan Graham at Carnegie Hall for the 75 minute tour de force.

For more information and tickets, click here.

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Recent and Latest News

Rita Dove interview with WRITING OUT LOUD now available

April 08, 2025

In 2010 Teresa Miller, founder & former executive director of the Oklahoma Center for Poets and Writers at Oklahoma State University in Tulsa, conducted an excellent interview with Rita Dove for PBS affiliate OETA. Long widely inaccessible, it is now available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oENyftYVqKI
Rita Dove's "Prose in a Small Space" featured as Poem-A-Day

March 16, 2025

On Sunday, March 16, 2025, Rita Dove's poem "Prose in a Small Space" was featured as Poem-A-Day on the Academy of American Poets' website. The archived version, including the sound file of her reading the poem and a short intro, can be found here.
Tania Leon's "Singsong" featuring Rita Dove's poetry to make New York premiere in 2026

March 17, 2025

In the New York premiere of Singsong, visionary composer Tania León sets to music the hard-edged “cricket poems” of US Poet Laureate (and fellow Pulitzer winner) Rita Dove, creating a rhythmically charged dialogue between the choir’s kaleidoscopic colors and the virtuosic flute inventions of MacArthur Fellow Claire Chase. This piece and others will be performed by the three-time Grammy-winning choir The Crossing at Carnegie Hall on March 24, 2026.

For more information about the performance, click here.
Rita Dove featured in The Cavalier Daily

February 24, 2025

In an insightful feature interview with UVA's student newspaper, The Cavalier Daily, Rita Dove reflects on "the resonance of unrecorded stories" and "her approach to writing and teaching". To read the feature by Sophie Hay, click here.
Rita Dove to give 2025 Joshua Ringel Memorial Reading

March 17, 2025

On March 30, 2025, Rita Dove will give the 2025 Joshua Ringel Memorial Reading at the Baltimore Museum of Art Meyerhoff Auditorium. The reading begins at 2:30 pm and will be followed by a book signing.

The Joshua Ringel Memorial Fund honors CTY (Center for Talented Youth) alumnus and avid poetry lover Joshua Ringel and his parents, Mel and Barbara. The fund supports the arts in Baltimore by bringing a distinguished poet to the city each year for a free public poetry reading.

The event is free and open to the public. You can register and find more information here.
Rita Dove interview in Literary Matters Magazine

February 14, 2025

A major new and comprehensive interview with Rita Dove: https://www.literarymatters.org/17-2-the-unguarded-territory-of-thought-a-conversation-with-rita-dove/
Rita Dove documentary now available free of charge

February 05, 2025

Eleven years after its premiere, Eduardo Montes-Bradley's documentary "Rita Dove - An American Poet" is now available free of charge on YouTube. It was first shown at The Paramount Theater in Charlottesville on January 31, 2014. It is 48 minutes long and contains a wealth of documentary material: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mao8itrJafI

Also, there is a recording of the premiere events at the Paramount Theater that includes an homage to Rita Dove by former Dave Matthews Band violinist Boyd Tinsley and a conversation of Rita with novelist and former UVA Creative Writing director Christopher Tilghman, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tbtjse9jS_4&t=2747s
Rita Dove and Lara Downes to perform “Tomorrow I May Be Far Away”

February 20, 2025

Hailed for her “luscious, moody and dreamy” playing by the New York Times, pianist Lara Downes is equally celebrated as a musical innovator and cultural investigator. In this collaboration with Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Rita Dove, she presents a kaleidoscopic evening of music and poetry inspired by myriad stories of migration and transformation.

The performance will take place at 8 pm on Saturday, February 22 at the Reston Community Center in Reston, Virginia. For more information and to purchase tickets, click here.
Rita Dove to perform with the Cecilia Chorus at New York premiere of "The World Called"

March 28, 2025

Pairing works by Johannes Brahms and the distinguished American composer Adolphus Hailstork (setting a text by former US poet laureate Rita Dove), this powerful concert celebrates the meaning and purpose of our time on earth, and pays tribute to the memory of Heather Heyer in what would have been her 40th birthday year. Heyer’s mother Susan Bro will address the audience, and honored guest Rita Dove will recite her poem from the stage. “The world called, and I answered.”

The concert will be held at 8 pm on Saturday, April 26, 2025 at Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage in Carnegie Hall. For more information or to purchase tickets, follow this link.
Rita Dove on "City Lights with Lois Reitzes"

January 24, 2025

An excellent interview with Rita Dove by Lois Reitzes on her WABE (Atlanta NPR) program "City Lights"! After accessing the website below, it can be listened to by first clicking on "Episode Playlist", then scrolling to Jan. 8, 2025 and clicking on the play button. https://www.wabe.org/podcasts/city-lights/
Rita Dove featured on "Finding Your Roots"

January 22, 2025

First broadcast on Tuesday, January 21, 2025, UVA's own Rita Dove, Henry Hoyns Professor of Creative Writing, was featured on the popular PBS program "Finding Your Roots" (in Season 11's Episode 3, Stranger Than Fiction). The one hour program, in which host Henry Louis Gates, Jr. explores the family trees of novelist Amy Tan and poet Rita Dove - traveling across China and the American South to uncover long lost stories of the ancestors who inspired their work - is now available on the Internet without a subscription or streaming service, free of charge and no sign-in requirements, until Feb. 19, 2025: https://www.pbs.org/video/stranger-than-fiction-pleuzj/ .
In Remembrance of President Jimmy Carter

December 30, 2024

Rita Dove met President Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn several times over the years -- most notably in 1995 when she and Carter hosted Nobel Prize laureates in literature at The Carter Center in Atlanta for the Cultural Olympiad (a precursor event to the 1996 Olympics); and later that same year, they joined forces again to open the Dylan Thomas Center in Swansea, Wales, during a festive summer weekend where Rita Dove's daughter Aviva Dove-Viebahn, Ph.D. (UVA M.A. in art history 2003), then 12 years old, also had the honor of meeting the Carters.

All photos © by Fred Viebahn.

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Sonata Mulattica: The True Story of Beethoven's "Kreutzer" Sonata *Free Registration Required*

December 11, 2024

Fri., Jan. 17: Pulitzer Prize-winner and former Poet Laureate of the United States Rita Dove reads from her award-winning true tale of the origin of what we know now as the “Kreutzer” Sonata of Beethoven- and George Bridgetower, the Black violinist who inspired him. Shooting star violinist Hannah White makes her Emory debut performing the work with pianist William Ransom.

You can read reviews of the performance in The Emory Wheel and Ear Relevant.

Rita Dove discussed the performance on "City Lights with Lois Reitzes" on WABE/90.1 on January 8 between 1 and 2 pm (with a rebroadcast at 10 pm).
English/Italian edition of "Playlist for the Apocalypse" published

November 13, 2024

The bilingual (English/Italian) edition of "Playlist for the Apocalypse", edited and translated by Ana Ilievska, was recently published by Interno Poesia Editore in Latiano (Brindisi/Apulia).

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Rita Dove read at the Michener Center in Austin, Texas

October 02, 2024

Sponsored by the Michener Center for Writers, Rita Dove read at the Harry Ransom Center of the University of Texas at Austin on Tuesday, October 1. Photos taken by Fred Viebahn.

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Rita Dove appeared with Steven Pinker at the 89th Annual Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards Author Symposium

September 29, 2024

On Saturday, September 28, Rita Dove and Steven Pinker were honored for their work and longstanding service on the Anisfield-Wolf Awards jury. (Rita Dove has been a member since 1991 and Prof. Pinker since 2002; both have retired from their jury duties this year.) Their conversation, “Words and Wisdom - Celebrating Rita Dove and Steven Pinker,” was moderated by Dr. Jamie Hickner, Associate Director of the Baker-Nord Center at Case Western Reserve University and an Anisfield-Wolf Teaching Fellow. The event took place at The City Club of Cleveland and was streamed for public viewing. Photos by Fred Viebahn.

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Rita Dove read and hosted at Furious Flower Poetry Conference

September 20, 2024

On Thursday, September 19, Rita Dove read with Jericho Brown, Camille Dungy, and other poets at part of “Black Universe I: FFIV Featured Poets Reading.” On Friday, September 20, she hosted a "Laureate Reading and Conversation" with Angela Jackson, Amanda Johnston, Curtis Cristler, avery r. young, and Glenis Redmond. Both events took place in James Madison University’s Festival Ballroom.

Rita Dove also attended the first Furious Flower conference in 1994 (photos 1 and 2 below), the second conference in 2004 (photos 3-5), as well as the third conference in 2014 (photos 6-9), which was dedicated to her. Photos 9-20 are from this year's conference; you can view more at Rita Dove's official Facebook page. (All these Furious Flower photos over the years © by Fred Viebahn.)

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Rita Dove sings with Charlottesville Band at The Paramount Theatre

August 13, 2024

On August 13, Rita Dove sang with Doug Schneider, Jessica Wiseman, and Daniel Barrale in "The Great American Songbook Meets Big Band Jazz!" This was the Charlottesville Band's final concert of the summer season.

You can view photos of videos of the performance, credit Fred Viebahn, on Rita Dove's official Facebook page.
Rita Dove poem engraved on “The Dovecote” Passive House development in Harlem

August 22, 2024

Upon the suggestion of visionary architect David Finehirsch, Rita Dove wrote a poem for “The Dovecote,” a boutique condominium complex at 11 West 126th Street in Harlem, New York, that gave the building its name and now adorns its facade. (Incidentally, from 1947 until his death in 1967, Langston Hughes lived in a nearby 19th-century brownstone, at 20 East 127th Street.)

The mosaic is by Emmett Wigglesworth.
From the Academy of American Poets archives: Rita Dove at the Nobel Laureates’ Reading

August 29, 2024

On August 29, the Academy of American Poets posted an archived photo of Rita Dove on their Facebook page. The photo was not taken in 1994 as the caption says, but on December 2, 1993 at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, on the occasion of Rita Dove introducing and joining in a poetry reading by Nobel laureates Czeslaw Milosz, Joseph Brodsky, Derek Walcott and Octavio Paz.
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Rita Dove read at Chicago's Printers Row Lit Fest

September 07, 2024

On Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024, the Printers Row Lit Fest in Chicago presented "A Life in Poetry", featuring Rita Dove in conversation with Elise Paschen, former executive director of the Poetry Society of America. This was Rita Dove's second participation in the widely acclaimed annual event. (In 2017, at a gala dinner preceding the festival, she received that year's Harold Washington Literary Award.) You can listen to a recording of the event by clicking the sound file below.

Photo below of Rita Dove with Elise Paschen and Printers Row programming director Amy Danzer.

Audio file

2024-09-07_rita_dove_in_conversation_with_elise_paschen.mp366.63 MB

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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.

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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.)
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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.

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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."
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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.

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