$10 suggested donation.
Registration is required as space is limited.
Parking is first come, first served and carpooling is encouraged.
In the 2026 Charles Olson Lecture, James Cook will explore the ways that Gloucester has been a site of celebration, interrogation, explication, negation, and extension of Charles Olson’s work in the period from the near the end of the twentieth century (beginning with the Charles Olson Festival in August of 1995) through the first quarter of the twenty-first century.
The talk will highlight Gloucester as a nexus of activity where local and visiting writers, artists, and educators have engaged with Olson not to memorialize the man and the work but to find and question what “is of essential use.” In the talk, Peter Anastas and Gerrit Lansing will figure prominently as guides, beacons, and exemplars who helped to create the conditions for a complex, multi-faceted, living engagement with Olson’s work.
As part of the program Amanda Cook, author of Ironstone Whirlygig, will read selections from her ongoing poem-by-poem response to The Maximus Poems, much of which has appeared in the literary magazine SpoKe. David Rich, author of Charles Olson: Letters Home (1949-1969), will provide context for Olson’s legacy in Gloucester and will participate in a Question & Answer session after the talk.
