Eclipse of the Future Poetry Reading with the Astro Poets

Poet astrologers Dorothea Lasky and Alex Dimitrov light up the Twitter-verse as the witty and whimsical Astro Poets. At this event they discuss connections between poetry, prophecy, and the future. Reading from recent work, Dimitrov and Lasky will share poems and their personal connections to the practice of astrology.

“I know that all poets have had that experience where they write a poem and then days or months or years later, they see that their poem has tapped into the future. I think that this happens because when you are really open to letting things emerge in a poem, the forces of time and the future can blend into your poem. Some people have said time is not linear and to me, nothing makes this more evident than art and poetry making. And I guess now Twitter making, too.”

—Dorothea Lasky, LitHub

The program will be followed by a book signing.

About the Speakers

Dorothea Lasky is a poet and the author of five full-length collections of poetry. Her newest book is Milk (Wave Books). She is also the author of Rome (Liveright/W.W. Norton) and Thunderbird, Black Life, and Awe, all from Wave Books. She has also written several chapbooks, including Snakes (Tungsten Press, 2017) and Poetry Is Not a Project (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2010). Her writing has appeared in Poetry, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Atlantic, and Boston Review, among other places. She is a co-editor of Open the Door: How to Excite Young People About Poetry (McSweeney’s, 2013). Currently, she is an Associate Professor of Poetry at Columbia University’s School of the Arts, where she co-directs Columbia Artist/Teachers (CA/T) and organizes the summer writing program.

Alex Dimitrov is the author of two collections of poetry, Together and by Ourselves, Begging for It, and the online chapbook American Boys. He has taught writing at Columbia University, Bennington College, and this fall he’ll be teaching at Princeton University and NYU. His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and Poetry. He is the former Senior Content Editor at the Academy of American Poets and lives in New York.