Join us for a conversation with poetry scholar and critic Kamran Javadizadeh. Javadizadeh is Associate Professor of English at Villanova University, where he works on the history of poetry and poetics, with emphasis on the 20th and 21st-century United States. He is also the host of the acclaimed podcast Close Readings, which features in-depth conversations about individual poems with fellow scholars and critics. We will hear about Professor Javadizedeh’s approach to reading, teaching, and thinking with poetry, before reading and discussing a short poem by the Iranian-American poet Solmaz Sharif. Come learn from one of our leading scholars of poetry and think about some big questions: How do poems work? How does poetry emerge out of modern life, social relations, or institutional arrangements? What can poems make happen? How might they change our lives?