WordShops registration is open! Learn about the festival's master-class writing workshops and reserve your seat here.

This website has a .gov link

The .gov means it’s official.

Louisiana government websites often end in .gov. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a Louisiana government site.

HTTPS Connection

The site is secure.

The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Catharine Savage Brosman

Home Featured Authors & Panelists Featured Participant Lineup 2026 Catharine Savage Brosman
©Joseph Warner

©Joseph Warner

Catharine Savage Brosman, professor emerita of French at Tulane University, is prominent in the Republic of Letters as an essayist, scholar in French and American Literature, and, foremost, poet. Her fifteen poetry collections include, most recently, Metates and Other Poems, Arm in Arm, Memory of Manaus, and Clara’s Bees. Her short fiction appeared as An Aesthetic Education and Other Stories. Brosman lives in Houston, Texas.

 

Schedule

Will be posted when available.

Fire in the Mind: Poems New and Selected

Fire in the Mind crowns the lifetime career of a poet whom Claude Wilkinson calls "one of this country's finest poets." This volume presents selections from Brosman's debut collection, Watering (1972) through Metates and Other Poems (2025) and new and uncollected work. The range of topics, mastery of form, and fidelity to what Wilkinson terms "her traditionalist aesthetic" are visible throughout. While often personal, the work also sketches countless friends and strangers as well as historical figures. Romantic sweep and broad strokes alternate with close focus, a classical bent. Many poems are centered on fate. The geographic scope includes Spain, the English Channel, and the American South and Southwest. Nature occupies a major place, appreciated for itself but always in the human light of sensation and intellection. The iambic rhythm is felt everywhere, whatever the line and stanza forms--crafted, controlled free verse, blank verse, or traditional rhymed, metered lines.