2018 Massachusetts Poetry Festival

What can poems teach us about what it means to have a father, or to lose a father, or not to ever have one be an important figure in one's life? How might a poem help us understand what our fathers did provide and what they were incapable of? As fathers seem at times enigmatic, how might a poem help identify key moments when we came to understand them better, perhaps pointing toward re-considerations and re-evaluations of the relationship? In sum, how might poems help us take the measure of the long-lasting impact of our fathers on our lives? Five poets, four on the Suffolk University creative writing faculty and one Suffolk student-writer, will read their own poems that address these questions, and discuss briefly how poetic insight and form can yield surprising insights and new ways of knowing and/or not knowing what a father is.