"I, Maximus of Gloucester, am very old."

Charles Olson is 100 feet tall. Oh wait, no, he’s 100 years old. Oh wait, no, he would have been a hundred years old, and 100 feet tall, this year, if he were still alive. And in celebration of birth of this giant of poetry, ye olde Poetics Program at the University at Buffalo is hosting a two-day Olson Symposium. The event features readings by British poet Tom Raworth, who was a friend and publisher of Olson’s, and a number of critical roundtables, starring Raworth, Bruce Jackson, Steve McCaffery, Carla Billiteri, Michael Boughn, and more:

Olson served as the final rector of Black Mountain College, the experimental and influential interdisciplinary liberal arts college that operated from 1933 to 1957 in the Appalachian Mountains of western North Carolina. Black Mountain launched an extraordinary number of literary, performing and visual artists of the American avant-garde of the 1960s who continue to influence a wide range of American artists today.

Olson could be considered the godfather of the critically acclaimed UB Poetics Program, founded and directed by the late UB Professor Robert Creeley, who taught at Black Mountain, and with whom Olson enjoyed a lively correspondence. In fact, Olson coined the term “postmodern” in a 1949 letter to Creeley.