Twenty Years Later: Poets and Professors Cheryl J. Fish and Marguerite Maria Rivas Share Their 9/11-Centered Work

Join us for a 9/11 centered reading and conversation with two professors who witnessed the day’s events. As poets, they have used their creative medium to process and express what they and many others experienced.

Cheryl J. Fish, a BMCC English professor who helped evacuate students from 199 Chambers Street that day, is the author of Crater & Tower. A resident of Tribeca, Professor Fish witnessed the traumatic events first-hand and ran to pick up her two-year old in a nearby daycare as the towers crumbled. As a visiting writer with scientists at a gathering at Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument in Washington state, she was finally able to process the events of 9/11 and compose these poems.

Marguerite Maria Rivas, the first poet laureate of Staten Island, is the author of the full-length collection of poetry, Tell No One: Poems of Witness, in which she reflects on the kinship and the resiliency of Staten Islanders in the aftermath of 9/11. Rivas’ poem “Witness” is included in the National September 11th Museum’s online collection, along with two others.

Register in advance for this event.

See a complete list of events for the 20th commemoration of 9/11.

For more information, contact Cheryl J. Fish, English Department, at cfish@bmcc.cuny.edu.