The Blaney Lecture on contemporary poetry and poetics is offered annually by a prominent poet. Past lectures have been given by Elizabeth Alexander, Richard Blanco, Anne Carson, Carolyn Forché, Joy Harjo, Terrance Hayes, Jane Hirshfield, Susan Howe, Adrian Matejka, Sharon Olds, Alicia Ostriker, Claudia Rankine, and Patricia Smith.
The Blaney Lecture was created in memory of former Academy of American Poets Board member Dr. Dorothy Gulbenkian Blaney, past president of Cedar Crest College and champion of women and education, by a gift from her estate.
The Academy of American Poets' programs are made possible by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the New York State Council on the Arts, with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
Past Blaney Lectures
Jane Hirshfield, Making the Invisible Visible: Some Thoughts on Poetry & Science, 2024
Patricia Smith, The Scrawny Little Black Girl with the Hasty Pigtails Sounds Out ‘Anemone,’ 2023
Paisley Rekdal, Beyond Empathy, Beyond the Archive: Notes on Poetic Representation, 2022
Adrian Matejka, Let’s Stay Together: Notes About Black Poetry & Community, 2020 - 2021
Terrance Hayes, Survey of an American Century, 2019
Alicia Ostriker, Containing Multitude: Poetry and the City, 2018
Claudia Rankine, 2017
Sharon Olds, Favorite Moments in Poems from Chaucer to Clifton, 2016
Joy Harjo, Ancestors: A Mapping of Indigeneous Poetry & Poets, 2015
Richard Blanco, On Becoming A Presidential Inaugural Poet, 2014
Carolyn Forché, Not Persuasion, But Transport: The Poetry of Witness, 2013
Elizabeth Alexander, Rethinking Lucille Clifton, 2012
Susan Howe, The Whispered Rush, Telepathy of Archives, 2011
Anne Carson, 2010