This year, the University of Georgia’s monthlong Spotlight on the Arts celebration will begin with an ambitious new event: the first UGA Poetry Festival, a two-day series of public readings by five major American poets.

The festival takes place Nov. 4–5 and is presented by The Georgia Review and the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts, in partnership with the department of English and the Creative Writing Program.

The festival’s opening keynote event on Nov. 4 features readings and Q&A with celebrated poet Edward Hirsch, a MacArthur Fellow and president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and National Book Award-winner Robin Coste Lewis. The event begins at 5:30 p.m. in the UGA Chapel and is part of the university’s Fall 2025 Signature Lecture Series.

For its second event, featuring poets Michael Collier, Vievee Francis and Garrett Hongo, the festival moves to the Georgia Museum of Art at 5:30 p.m. on Nov. 5.

“I’m very excited to have the opportunity to bring these five preeminent poets to Athens,” said Gerald Maa, director and editor of The Georgia Review. “Since moving here in 2019, I’ve come to know my new hometown as one that values culture and connection, and I’m just thankful for the support from the Willson Center and our institutional home, the UGA Libraries, that has allowed us to offer our communities an opportunity to enjoy poetry on such a large scale. The poets, I know, are very excited about coming to town to be part of such a happening, and I’m excited to see our campus and town match that enthusiasm.”

Edward Hirsch has published 10 books of poetry, including“Gabriel: A Poem” and “Stranger by Night.” His eight books of prose include “How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry” and “The Heart of American Poetry.” His new book is the memoir “My Childhood in Pieces.” He has received numerous prizes including the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Pablo Neruda Presidential Medal of Honor and the National Jewish Book Award. Since 2003, Hirsch has been president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

Robin Coste Lewis is the Ford Foundation scholar-in-residence at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Her five poetry collections include “Archive of Desire: A poem in four parts for C. P. Cavafy” (2025); “To the Perfect Realization of Helplessness” (2022), winner of the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry Collection; and “Voyage of the Sable Venus” (2015), which won the National Book Award in Poetry and was named one of the best books of the last 20 years by Literary Hub. Lewis was poet laureate of Los Angeles from 2017–2019 and has published work in The New Yorker, The New York Times and The Paris Review. She is a professor of poetry and poetics at the University of Southern California.

Michael Collier is the author of eight books of poems, including “The Clasp and Other Poems”; “The Ledge,” a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; “My Bishop and Other Poems”; and “The Missing Mountain: New and Selected Poems.” Among his many honors are a Guggenheim Fellowship, two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships and an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Collier was director of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conferences from 1994–2017 and Poet Laureate of Maryland from 2001–2004.

Vievee Francis is the author of four books of poetry including “The Shared World” (2023) and “Forest Primeval”(2015), winner of the 2017 Kingsley Tufts Award and the Hurston Wright Legacy Award. She received a 2024 Guggenheim Fellowship and the 2021 Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry. She has also been the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Award and a Kresge Fellowship. Francis is a professor of English and creative writing at Dartmouth College.

Poet, memoirist and audio writer Garrett Hongo was born in Volcano, Hawai’i, and grew up there and in Los Angeles. His poetry collection“The River of Heaven” (1988) received the Lamont Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. In nonfiction, he has published “The Mirror Diary” (2017) and “Volcano: A Memoir of Hawaiʻi” (1995), perhaps his best-known work. Hongo has earned fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He is a Distinguished Professor at the University of Oregon.

“I’m so delighted we are having this celebration of poetry at the heart of the arts festival,” said Nicholas Allen, Baldwin Professor in Humanities and director of the Willson Center. “The Georgia Review is a national treasure, and our community of creative writers is first-rate. It’s a real pleasure to bring everything, and everyone, together in the company of great poets. Words ground us, and poetry inspires us, images and ideas together in a community of dreams that become reality. I look forward to being with everyone at the festival, listening, sharing and celebrating.”

Books and other publications will be available for purchase at the events, which are free and open to the public with no advance tickets or reservations required. Those who would like to attend and require accommodations for accessibility should contact Dave Marr at davemarr@uga.edu.