# Witter Bynner Fellows Poetry Reading 2008

Poet Laureate Charles Simic has chosen two new voices in poetry, business-development writer Matthew Thorburn and attorney Monica Youn, for the 2008 Witter Bynner Fellowships.Thorburn and Youn each will receive a $10,000 fellowship, provided by the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry in conjunction with the Library of Congress. It is the 11th year the fellowships have been awarded. Librarian of Congress James H. Billington said, "These fellowships to poets of distinction who as yet are not widely known provide a wonderful way for the Laureate, the Library and the Witter Bynner Foundation to encourage poets and poetry." In explaining his selections, Simic said, "Monica's work conveys a skeptical, intelligent voice, alert and sharp, delighting as much in sense as in nonsense, engaged by everything from history to comic strips. Youn takes the lyric poem beyond its traditional form, reinvents it and in the process reminds us what imagination at its most playful can accomplish." Of Thorburn, Simic said, "Matthew's work is wry, surprising, jovial and a little mysterious. His poems tie together memories of family and friends and examine nostalgias with a kind of quiet, bemused remove. Even when he uses sonnets and other traditional forms, his voice remains distinctive, intimate and, above all, memorable."

- Kind: Talk
- Year: 2008
- By: Library Of Congress. Literary Initiatives Office
- Archive: [Library of Congress](https://www.loc.gov/item/2021687941/)
- Licence or status: Rights statement at the Library of Congress (as the archive states it)
- Credit: Library of Congress
- Who can watch: Tweens profiles and older (the archive gives no rating; placed by Invisible Network from its collection and subjects)

[Watch now](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/watch/archive/loc/2021687941?play=1)