On May 20th at 7pm, the Poetry Society of America is hosting a polyvocal celebration of the extraordinary and enigmatic Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa. Poets John Keene, Idra Novey, Mónica de la Torre, and Vijay Seshadri will read, introduced by translator Patricio Ferrari.

All of Fernando Pessoa's collections published by New Directions—The Book of Disquiet, The Complete Works of Alberto Caeiro, The Complete Works of Alvaro de Campos, and The Complete Works of Ricardo Reis—will be available for sale at the event.

Tickets are $10 for in-person, $5 for livestream, and free for members of the Poetry Society of America.

RSVP here.

Become a member of the PSA here.

Patricio Ferrari is a polyglot poet, literary translator, and editor. He holds degrees from the Sorbonne (MAS), Brown University (MFA), and the University of Lisbon (PhD). As translator and editor, he has published more than twenty books, including the complete works of Fernando Pessoa’s three heteronyms—Alberto Caeiro, Álvaro de Campos, and Ricardo Reis—(with Margaret Jull Costa), and The Galloping Hour: French Poems by Alejandra Pizarnik (with Forrest Gander). His other book-length translations include works by António Osório (Portuguese), Frank Stanford, and Martin Corless-Smith (English).

John Keene is the author, co-author, co-editor, and translator of a handful of books, including Essex Hemphill's Love Is a Dangerous Word: Selected Poems (2025), co-edited with Robert F. Reid-Pharr; Punks: New & Selected Poems (2021), which received the 2022 National Book Award for Poetry, the 2022 Thom Gunn Award and a 2022 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry; and Counternarratives: Stories and Novellas (2015), which received the inaugural Republic of Consciousness Prize, an American Book Award, a Lannan Literary Award and a Windham-Campbell Prize for Fiction. He has translated poetry and fiction by an array of writers, including Brazilian author Hilda Hilst’s novel Letters from a Seducer, which Pushkin Press published in a revised edition in 2025. A 2018 MacArthur Fellow, he is Board of Governors Professor of English and Distinguished Professor of English and Africana Studies at Rutgers University-Newark. Keene will read from The Book of Disquiet.

Idra Novey is the author of the recent poetry collection Soon and Wholly, longlisted for the PEN Voelcker Award, and the novel Take What You Need, a finalist for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize and named one of the New York Times 100 notable books of 2023. One Moment, her co-translation with Garth Greenwell of Spanish poet Luis Munoz, is out this month. Novey will read from the Complete Works of Ricardo Reis.

Vijay Seshadri was born in India in mid-1950s and moved to America at the end of that decade. He is the author of the poetry books Wild Kingdom, The Long Meadow, The Disappearances, 3 Sections, and That Was Now, This Is Then, as well as many essays, reviews, and memoir fragments. His work has been recognized with a number of honors, including the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. He teaches at Sarah Lawrence College. Seshadri will read from the Complete Works of Álvaro de Campos.

Mónica de la Torre is the author of seven books of poetry, of which the most recent is Pause the Document. Others include Repetition Nineteen, which centers on experimental translation, and The Happy End/All Welcome, a riff on a riff on Kafka's Amerika. She has translated poetry by poets such as Amanda Berenguer, Omar Cáceres, Ana Hatherly, Lila Zemborain, Gerardo Deniz, and Ana Cristina Cesar. Her co-edited anthologies include Women in Concrete Poetry 1959–79 (2020), and Reversible Monuments: Contemporary Mexican Poetry (2002). De la Torre will read from the Complete Works of Alberto Caeiro.