Bethel’s Byrd’s Books hosts award-winning writer at Broken Symmetry Gastro Brewery

Join Bethel’s Byrd's Books as they host award-winning poet and writer Major Jackson in conversation with WCSU’s Brian Clements at Broken Symmetry Gastro Brewery on Sunday, October 23rd,3:30pm to 5:30pm, for an afternoon of readings, great beverage and splendid food.

This special event will celebrate the publication of his new book, A Beat Beyond: Selected Prose of Major Jackson. The collection passionately surveys the radical shifts in the art of poetry and notes its necessity for a modern sensibility.  Broken Symmetry is located at 5 Depot Space. Registration is required due to space: please contact Byrd’s Books at https://conta.cc/3EqATRW

Major Jackson is the author of five books of poetry, including The Absurd Man (2020), Roll Deep (2015), Holding Company (2010), Hoops (2006) and Leaving Saturn (2002), which won the Cave Canem Poetry Prize for a first book of poems. A recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, Major Jackson has been awarded a Pushcart Prize, a Whiting Writers’ Award, and has been honored by the Pew Fellowship in the Arts and the Witter Bynner Foundation in conjunction with the Library of Congress. Major Jackson lives in Nashville, Tennessee, where he is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in the Humanities at Vanderbilt University. He serves as the Poetry Editor of The Harvard Review.

Brian Clements, PhD is Chair of the Writing Department at Western Connecticut State University. He is the author or editor of over a dozen collections of poetry, including most recently A Book of Common Rituals and the New York Times News & Noteworthy anthology, Bullets into Bells: Poets & Citizens  Respond to Gun Violence 

“Gathering essays, talks, and reviews, A Beat Beyond offers readers a window into the poetics of a (pun intended) Major figure in contemporary American poetry, writes Evie Shockley, Zara Neale Hurston Professor of English at Rutgers University.These crisp, highly readable pieces articulate the aesthetics informing Jackson’s editorial practices and sketch the readings, musics, lived experiences, and resulting insights that comprise the ‘lyrical self’ of a Black poet with Philadelphia roots.”

Byrd’s Books is located at 178 Greenwood Avenue, across from the Bethel Public Library. Author discussions and Book Group gatherings are regularly added to Byrd’s Books’ calendar of events at ByrdsBooks.com Hours are Tuesdays through Saturdays 10:00am to 6:00pm and Sundays 12:00 noon to 4:00pm. For directions to the store or more information, call Byrd’s Books at 203-730-2973. To review the shop’s expanded catalog of new titles, go to ByrdsBooks.com