Here are the artists, writers, and thinkers named 2021 Guggenheim fellows from New England
By Diti Kohli Globe Correspondent,Updated April 8, 2021, 5:22 p.m.
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An award-winning poet. An art historian. And a cultural scholar who studies the Netherlands.
These are just a few of the New England artists, writers, and thinkers awarded the John Simon Guggenheim Foundationâs annual fellowship this year. Of 184 selected fellows named on Thursday, eight hail from Massachusetts, boasting achievements in the humanities and creative arts categories. Another three reside in Connecticut or New Hampshire.
Since 1925, the fellowship has bestowed millions to enable honorees to âengage in research in any field of knowledge and creation in any of the arts, under the freest possible conditions and irrespective of race, color, or creed,â according to the foundationâs website.
Memorious.
INTRODUCTION
My formal study of poetry came somewhat late, and in Boston, a city of poets. I had the good fortune of working with Andrea Cohen at the Blacksmith House Poetry Series in Cambridge, a series that my teacher, Gail Mazur had founded thirty years earlier. I took tickets, sold books, turned the lights on and off, and sat in the darkness with poets listening to other poets. Sometimes the well-known poets were on the stage, sometimes they were the ones in the audience listening to first-book poets. There were also memorable tribute readings. We were all in it together, in this magic realm of poetry in a small room that held the history of so many great poets. I learned that poets need one another and learn from one another at all stages of life and career. I learned poetry from listening, from the rhythms of different poets washing over me every Monday night. I learned to contribute. Poetry should be a world where any of us can live.