A Matter of Life and Death (A Thousand Words)
Schedule
Wed, 29 Apr, 2026 at 07:00 pm
UTC-04:00Location
28 Amity St, Amherst, MA, United States, Massachusetts 01002 | Amherst, MA
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A Thousand Words invites writers, poets, and novelists to Amherst Cinema, asking each guest to program a film accompanying a discussion around their use of the written word in relationship to the moving image. Discover how the selected film inspires them, and where it intersects with their practice.For this screening of A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH, we are joined by poet Peter Gizzi.
A British wartime aviator who cheats death (David Niven) must argue for his life before a celestial court, hoping to prolong his fledgling romance with an American radio operator (Kim Hunter).
From the legendary filmmaking team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (THE RED SHOES, BLACK NARCISSUS), this cosmic romance alternates between rich Technicolor scenes on earth and a starkly beautiful, modernist black-and-white afterlife.
Peter Gizzi is the author of several collections of poetry, most recently Fierce Elegy, Winner of the Massachusetts Book Award (2023); Now It's Dark (2020); and Archeophonics, a Finalist for the National Book Award (2016); all from Wesleyan. In the UK, Carcanet published Sky Burial: New and Selected Poems (2020) and in 2024 Penguin UK published an expanded edition of Fierce Elegy (Winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize).
His honors include fellowships from The Rex Foundation, The Howard Foundation, The Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and The Guggenheim Foundation. He has twice been the recipient of The Judith E. Wilson Visiting Fellowship in Poetry at the University of Cambridge. In 2024-5, he was a Senior Global Fellow in Poetry at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. He is the series editor of The Collected Works of Jack Spicer, now in four volumes. He teaches Poetry and Poetics at the UMass Amherst.
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Where is it happening?
28 Amity St, Amherst, MA, United States, Massachusetts 01002Event Location & Nearby Stays:
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