John Cabot University Welcomes Moira Egan for a Poetry Reading

On June 14, the John Cabot University Institute for Creative Writing and Literary Translation hosted the fourth event of its Summer Session Reading Series, a reading from Amore e Morte (Tlon, 2022) by American poet Moira Egan. Egan is currently teaching a creative writing workshop on poetry at JCU. She has published nine books of poetry, most recently, Amore e Morte, a bilingual collection featuring new work and selected older poems.

Moira Egan

Egan read 12 of her poems and discussed her writing process. She attributed most of her work to her “muse,” which she describes as a “collective unconscious” that inspires her writing. In explaining this process, she said, “You don’t always have control over your creative urge. Sometimes it feels as if it comes from somewhere else.” Because of this, Egan does not tend to write every day, and sometimes, she only writes in the summer. She encouraged others interested in writing to find a writing process they’re comfortable with.

Another part of Egan’s personal writing process is letting her poems speak for themselves. She said, “Unlike many famous poets and artists who have said ‘a poem is never finished, it’s only abandoned,’ I know when it’s finished. It did what it wanted to do. I give my poems a lot of agency.” With topics ranging from Greek mythology to botany to the moon, Egan writes about the different things she learns and experiences and uses a variety of styles in depicting them. Recently, a number of her poems, including Lemons and Mrs. Epidemiologist, were inspired by the Covid-19 pandemic as she described life under lockdown.

A resident of Rome, Moira Egan earned a B.A. from Bryn Mawr College, an M.A. from the Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars, and an M.F.A. from Columbia University, where James Merrill chose her graduate manuscript for the David Craig Austin Prize. Her collection Synæsthesium (Criterion Books, 2017) won The New Criterion Poetry Prize. Previous books published in the United States are Hot Flash Sonnets (Passager Books, 2013); Spin (Entasis Press, 2010); Bar Napkin Sonnets (The Ledge Press, 2009), which won the 2008 Ledge Poetry Chapbook Competition; and Cleave (WWPH, 2004).

Egan has also published three bilingual collections in Italy, with translations by her husband, Damiano Abeni: Olfactorium (Italic Pequod, 2018), Botanica Arcana/Strange Botany (Italic Pequod, 2014), and La Seta della Cravatta/The Silk of the Tie (Edizioni l’Obliquo, 2009). She and her Abeni have also translated the works of several renowned Amerian poets into Italian, including volumes by John Ashbery, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Charles Simic, Mark Strand, and Charles Wright.

Egan has had writing residencies at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center, and the James Merrill House. She also teaches creative writing at the St. Stephen’s School in Rome.