Poetry Reading in Northfield: Christopher Bakken

Poet Christopher Bakken will be giving a poetry reading at the Northfield Public Library (210 Washington St., Northfield, MN, 55057) on Thursday, February 7, 2019, starting at 7:00 pm. Christopher Bakken is the author of three books of poetry, most recently Eternity & Oranges, as well as the culinary memoir Honey, Olives, Octopus: Adventures at the Greek Table.  His poetry, nonfiction, reviews and translations have appeared widely in the U.S. and abroad, in places like The Paris Review, The Wall Street Journal, Ploughshares, Best American Poetry, and New England Review.  A former Fulbright Scholar at the University of Bucharest, he is Frederick F. Seely Professor of English at Allegheny College and Director of Writing Workshops in Greece: Thessaloniki and Thasos. 

Bakken will also give a public talk at Carleton College (Language & Dining Center Room 104) on Wednesday, February 6, starting at 5:00 pm, The talk is titled: Honey, Olives, Octopus: A Hellenized Barbarian Raids the Greek Table. For a decade, the American poet Christopher Bakken traveled across Greece researching the basic elements of the Greek table (olives, bread, fish, cheese, beans, etc.), looking for the single best representative of each. That delicious quest led him to consider the cultural, historical and sometimes archaeological strata of the Greek culinary tradition, pondering the continuities between contemporary Greece and the ancient civilization from which it sprang. 

Co-sponsored by the Carleton College Departments of Classics, Anthropology and Sociology, and English; Center for Global and Regional Studies; Cross Cultural Studies European Studies; and the Northfield Poet Laureate. This event is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Southeastern Minnesota Arts Council thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts & cultural heritage fund.