Richard Smith will read from his new book, Beyond Where Words Can Go: A Novel in 200 Sonnets.
Hosted by: Center for Existential Studies and Psychotherapy
Location: Rock Creek Park, Picnic Shelter #13,Washington, D.C.
Time: 10:30am
To register, email here: https://richardsmithwriting.com/?page_id...
Beyond Where Words Can Go traces a group of Tudor-era Benedictine monks before, during, and after Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries and England’s zigzag into Protestantism. What happens when a top-down authority dictates changes in a faith’s doctrines, rituals, and even the language in which it’s understood? How do you reconcile devotion to God with love for another man? Where’s home when the place you’ve lived for decades is destroyed not only as an institution but also as a physical structure? It takes creativity and profound fellow-feeling for these “odd and precious” men to chart a path forward.
Richard Smith’s first book, Not a Soul but Us, is a narrative in sonnets about the plague pandemic in mid-14th-century England. It won the 2021 May Sarton New Hampshire Poetry Prize and was released in 2022 by Bauhan Publishing. Richardis a psychologist with a clinical practice in Washington, D.C.
He is on the core faculty of the Center for Existential Studies and Psychotherapy, for which he gives presentations on plays and novels, ranging from Sophocles to Ta-Nehisi Coates. He and his partner live with their two dogs, who inspired Richard’s initial foray into sonnet writing.