“I TOO DISLIKE IT.” WHY POETRY ENDURES.

Four poets ask: How does poetry continue to adapt in a time of eroding attention, distraction, surveillance and totalitarianism?
About this Event

“I TOO DISLIKE IT.” WHY POETRY ENDURES.
Poets Michael Dumanis, Monica Ferrell, Bianca Stone, and Mark Wunderlich return to the basics during the second day of The Rough Notes Festival, asking: What are poems for? Why do we write them? What happens when we read or write poetry? And what is the role of poetry in a culture that loves to consume addictive slop? Despite its bad PR, poetry occupies a central role in our cultural consciousness, but why? How does poetry continue to adapt in a time of eroding attention, distraction, surveillance and totalitarianism?

ABOUT THE ROUGH NOTES FESTIVAL

Presented by Kinderhook Books, the three-day event is, at its core, a literary festival—but it also celebrates the craft of writing in all its forms: songwriting, stand-up comedy, screenwriting, art, design, and more.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS
MICHAEL DUMANIS
Born in Moscow to Jewish parents of mixed Ukrainian, Russian, and Belarusian descent, Michael immigrated to the United States at the age of five. His second book of poems, Creature, was published by Four Way Books in 2023, and was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award. His first, My Soviet Union, won the Juniper Prize for Poetry. He is also coeditor, with poet Cate Marvin, of the anthology Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century. With Kevin Prufer, he coedited the volume Russell Atkins: On the Life & Work of an American Master. He is a member of the Literature Faculty at Bennington College, where he runs the Poetry at Bennington reading series and serves as Editor of Bennington Review.
MONICA FERRELL
Monica is the author of four books of fiction and poetry, including The Future (March 2026) and the collection You Darling Thing, a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Award and Believer Book Award in Poetry. Her novel The Answer Is Always Yes was named one of Booklist's Top Ten Debut Novels of the Year. Her first collection of poems, Beasts for the Chase, was a finalist for the Asian American Writers Workshop Prize in Poetry and won the Sarabande Books Kathryn A. Morton Prize. She has been recognized with residencies at the Civitella Ranieri Foundation and the MacDowell Colony, a Wallace Stegner Fellowship, and a Discovery/The Nation Prize. She has taught fiction and poetry for the MFA Programs at Columbia University and Bennington College and is Professor of Creative Writing at Purchase College (SUNY). She was born in Delhi, India, and divides her time between Vermont and New York.
BIANCA STONE
Bianca is a Vermont-based poet and scholar currently serving as Vermont’s poet laureate. Stone is the author of the poetry collections, What is Otherwise Infinite, winner of the 2022 Vermont Book Award; The Möbius Strip Club of Grief, Someone Else’s Wedding Vows, and The Near and Distant World (Tin House, 2026). She collaborated with Anne Carson on the illuminated version of Carson’s Sophocles translation, Antigonick, as well as illustrated a children’s book A Little Called Pauline, using a Gertrude Stein poem. Her poetry and writings have appeared widely in such magazines as The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Poets and Writers, The Nation and the Best American Poetry series. In 2013 she co-founded the poetry-based nonprofit, Ruth Stone House, with her partner the poet, Ben Pease, in honor her grandmother, the late poet, Ruth Stone, Ruth Stone House, where she organizes events and retreats, teaches classes on poetry and poetic study, hosts the Ode & Psyche Podcast and is editor-at-large for the poetry magazine, ITERANT.
MARK WUNDERLICH
Mark is the author of the forthcoming book, Matey, from Graywolf Press and four books of poems, the most recent of which is God of Nothingness, published by Graywolf in 2021. His other books include The Earth Avails, which received the Rilke Prize, Voluntary Servitude, and The Anchorage, which received the Lambda Literary Award. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the NEA, Massachusetts Cultural Council, Civitella Ranieri Foundation, the Amy Lowell Trust, and he has been a Wallace Stegner Fellow and held two fellowships at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, where he now serves as Chair of the Writing Committee. His poems, essays, reviews and interviews have appeared in The New Yorker, The Nation, The New Republic, The New York Times Magazine, Poetry, The Paris Review, and elsewhere, and his poems are widely anthologized. Since 2003, he has taught writing and literature at Bennington College, where he became the Director of the Writing Seminars in 2017. He is now the Executive Director. He holds a BA in German Literature and English from the University of Wisconsin, and an MFA in Poetry from Columbia University School of the Arts.