Poet Marcella Durand discusses latest published work at Kelly Writers House event

The Kelly Writers House hosted a poetry reading and discussion event with poet Marcella Durandon Wednesday. 

Durand — an award-winning poet and a fellow in poetics and poetic practice at Penn’s Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing from 2010-11  — read poems from her books “A Winter Triangle” and “The Light Factory,” a collaboration of poems and paintings with her mother Suzan Frecon, who is an abstract artist. The Oct. 29 event was cosponsored by Penn’s Creative Writing program. 

Laynie Browne, the host of the event and KWH’s modern poetry curriculum specialist, introduced Durand to begin the event. 

“It's a three part book, like the winter triangle, which is an asterism of three stars in the sky,” Durand said in an interview with The Daily Pennsylvanian. “I'm really thrilled about it, because it's a long term project that I've been writing for a few years.”

Durand added that she had a previous “project before where [she] was trying to work in a very strict poetic form.” She said that after completing 80 Alexandrian 12-syllable poems, she was so “worn out” that she pivoted to a new approach that would allow her to explore broader issues, including climate change and the evolution of language. 

“It's an open-ended book,” Durand said. “So I have a lot of invitations to other poets to pick up this journey of writing poetry.”

Throughout the event, Durand displayed her mother’s paintings to accompany some of her readings.

“This was a long time coming,” Durand said during the event. “I feel like I finally achieved adulthood in doing this with her.” 

A key theme of the reading was the impact of translation and multiculturalism on her work. 

“Translation became a way for me to understand my family and where I had come from,” Durand said when discussing her cultural background. Her father, who immigrated to the US from France, never spoke French at home. Now, Durand said whenever she experiences “writer’s block,” she can “go to translation” to give her “fresh ideas.”

“It forces me to look again at words I thought I knew and get more deeply into what words really mean when I translate them into English. It makes me rethink language,” she said. 

The event concluded with a question and answer session, where questions and comments came from an audience ranging from students to retired professors. 

“Thank you so much for opening my eyes and ears and heart to your poetry,” a woman in the audience, whom the DP was unable to identify, said. “I’m speechless.”

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