Since fall 2005, the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library’s curator has directed a reading series that has already boasted some of the best poets from America and abroad, from Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney, Poet Laureates Billy Collins and Carol Ann Duffy, National Book Award-winner Lucille Clifton, Inaugural Poet Elizabeth Alexander, and Pulitzer Prize-winners Galway Kinnell, Rita Dove, Mary Oliver and Emory’s own Natasha Trethewey.
Celebrating its ten-year anniversary in 2015, the reading series is one of the longest-running and most prominent initiatives of its kind on campus, regularly drawing large crowds culminating in the Seamus Heaney reading attendance of 1200. The result over ten seasons is a burgeoning archive and publishing concern of its own, with a distinctive look and ethos, like the Danowski Poetry Library itself.