Naomi Shihab Nye is considered one of the most accessible and exciting poets of the current generation. Author of six volumes of poetry, including the 1982 National Poetry Series selection Hugging the Jukebox, she is also the author and editor of numerous books for children and youth, as well as a book of essays. She will read from and discuss her work in An Afternoon with the Poet on Thursday, October 26 at 4 p.m. in UCSB Hatlen Theatre. Admission is free. Courtesy of the UCSB Bookstore, copies of books by Shihab Nye will be available for purchase and signing at the event.

Shihab Nye’s most recent work includes Fuel, a volume of poetry from 1998; Habibi, a semi-autobiographical novel for young readers set in Jerusalem, published in 1996; the 1997 picture book Lullaby Raft; and Never in a Hurry: Essays on People and Places from 1996. Her previous volumes of poetry include Words Under the Words: Selected Poems (1995); Red Suitcase (1994); Yellow Glove (1986); and Different Ways to Pray (1980). She has edited five anthologies of poetry for young readers including This Same Sky, The Tree Is Older than You Are: Poems and Paintings from Mexico and The Space Between Our Footsteps: Poems and Paintings from the Middle East. She edited the anthology What Have You Lost?, with portraits by her husband photographer Michael Nye; the book won the 2000 Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Prize.

Raised in St. Louis, Santa Fe and Jerusalem by her American mother and Palestinian father, Shihab Nye draws upon her Middle Eastern heritage, the diversity of Texas—her current home—and vivid impressions from her international travels, all the while celebrating the value and power of the ordinary and attesting to our shared humanity.

In “Famous,” she places recognition in relative perspective, “The river is famous to the fish,” “The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek,” “The boot is famous to the earth,” and “The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it/and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.”

She concludes,

“I want to be famous to shuffling men
who smile while crossing streets,
sticky children in grocery lines,
famous as the one who smiled back.

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,
or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,
but because it never forgot what it could do.”

But her work, often simultaneously, also bridges the gulfs that separate the cultures of the world, and reflects the personal impact of international events. In “For the 500th Dead Palestinian, ’Ibtisam Bozieh’,” she addresses the 13-year-old victim of violence directly:

“Little sister Ibtisam,
our sleep flounders, our sleep tugs
the cord of your name.
Dead at 13, for staring through
the window of a gun barrel
which did not know you wanted to be
a doctor.”

and finishes by generalizing:

“People in other countries speak easily
of being early, late.
Some will live to be eighty.
Some who never saw it
will not forget your face.”

A Witter Bynner Fellow for the Library of Congress for 2000, Shihab Nye has received widespread recognition and honors including two Jane Addams Children’s Book Awards, the Judy Lopez Memorial Award for Children’s Literature, three Texas Institute of Letters book prizes, a Lavan Award from the Academy of American Poets, four Pushcart Prizes and numerous “best book” and “notable book” citations by the American Library Association. She has appeared on the PBS documentaries The Language of Life with Bill Moyers and The United States of Poetry.

This event is presented by UCSB Arts & Lectures, The South Coast Writing Project and the UCSB Women’s Center.

For more information,
call UCSB Arts & Lectures at (805) 893-3535.

Editor: For photos, please call
Roman Baratiak at (805) 893-2080.