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Join artist Jane Kent and writer Major Jackson for an insightful conversation held in conjunction with Kent’s solo BCA exhibition, Between the Covers. They will discuss Why I Write Poetry, their second collaboration, from their unique perspectives as nationally recognized creators in distinct fields. Why I Write Poetry is a fine art edition featuring a poem by Jackson with artwork by Kent, forthcoming from Grenfell Press, NY, in 2025. Kent and Jackson will explore the benefits and challenges of collaborating across image and text, as well as sharing relevant contexts from art, literature, and life. This program is sponsored in part by The Mollie Ruprecht Fund for Visual Art, University of Vermont and Vermont Humanities.

Jane Kent received her BFA from University of the Arts, Philadelphia, PA. An award-winning printmaker, she has shown widely in solo and group exhibitions, as well as publishing artist’s books. Her recent fine art edition Little Albert, a collaboration with writer Joyce Carol Oates, was exhibited at The Met Gallery, Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, in 2023. Kent’s work is held in collections at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK; the Beinecke Library, Yale University, CT; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; among others. Kent is Professor of Studio Art at the University of Vermont and resides in New York, NY.

Major Jackson earned the Academy of American Poets Fellowship for distinguished poetic achievement in 2023. In the same year, he published his sixth collection of poetry, Razzle Dazzle: New and Selected Poems 2002–2022 (W. W. Norton, 2023), and he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Jackson has held fellowships from the John S. Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, among others; and he is poetry editor of Harvard Review. Previously he was Richard Dennis Green and Gold Professor at the University of Vermont. Jackson is currently the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in the Humanities at Vanderbilt University and lives in Nashville, TN.

Image Credit: Jane Kent, Little Albert, 2023, mixed media, 15x22 in