Loading Events

« All Events

  • This event has passed.

Lowell Lecture: Reginald Dwayne Betts – An Evening of Poetry

March 22, 2017 | 6:00 pm - 7:00 pm

Boston Public Library welcomes REGINALD DWAYNE BETTS for a reading from his two critically-acclaimed collections of poetry, Shahid Reads His Own Palm and Bastards of the Reagan Era, a discussion of the power of language, and an examination of the important intersection of art and social justice. Betts transformed himself from a sixteen-year old teen sentenced to nine-years in prison to a critically acclaimed writer and student at Yale Law School. In 2016, he was awarded the PEN New England Award for poetry for Bastards of the Reagan Era. His memoir, A Question of Freedom: A Memoir of Learning, Survival, and Coming of Age in Prison, is the story of a young man confined in the worst prisons in the state of Virginia, where solitary confinement, horrific conditions, and the constant violence threatened to break his humanity. Instead, Betts used the time to turn himself into a poet, a scholar, and an advocate for the reform of the criminal justice system.

Details

Date:
March 22, 2017
Time:
6:00 pm - 7:00 pm
Event Categories:
, ,
Website:
http://www.bpl.org/programs/calendar.htm#/?i=4

Organizer

Lowell Institute
Phone:
(617) 248-5103
Email:
lowellinstitute@choate.com
Website:
http://www.lowellinstitute.org/

Venue

Boston Public Library
700 Boylston St
Boston, 02116 United States
+ Google Map
Phone:
(617) 536-5400
Website:
www.bpl.org

Did You Know?

Certain books were “banned in Boston” at least as far back as 1651, when one William Pynchon wrote a book criticizing Puritanism.