Elevating Impact Stories: Heather McHugh

Leading up to the Elevating Impact Summit on Friday, June 20 in Portland, Oregon, we’ve invited event speakers, award nominees, and panelists to engage in a stories project. We believe that storytelling is an essential part of effective social innovation. How can we tell stories in a way that generates interest and creates connections? How can we listen to the stories of others with the empathy needed to achieve true understanding? We hope that by sharing the stories of our speakers, or writings that reflect elements of their journeys, you will learn more about each person, and explore the promise and challenge of social innovation.

Heather McHugh reads English versions of five poems by European poets.  

“I wanted to read these poems […] to remind myself not to be hypnotized by repeated vocabulary. I want to remember what impact really means in human lives and human emotions.”

Heather McHugh won a 2009 MacArthur “Genius Grant” for poetry (and has published more than 10 volumes of poetry, essays and translation, most recently Upgraded to Serious from Copper Canyon Press). Her teaching career spans decades at the University of Washington, and before that stints at UC Berkeley, U of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Syracuse U., Warren Wilson College and elsewhere. In 2011 she began to design CAREGIFTED, a nonprofit that gives getaways (and celebratory recognition) to long-term caregivers of the severely disabled.

Heather McHugh will speak on the Encore Purpose panel and will read a poem at the Elevating Impact Summit on June 20, 2014.