Poet, translator, and classicist A.E. Stallings will deliver Princeton’s 2023–2024 Robert Fagles Lecture for Classics in the Contemporary Arts. Known for her rhyming translations of Lucretius and Hesiod and for her five books of formalist verse, Stallings has received numerous prizes, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a MacArthur “Genius” grant, and the Runciman Award. 

Stallings’ enthusiasm for classics and ancient literature is reflected in the titles of her award-winning poetry collections, including Archaic Smile (Richard Wilbur Award), Hapax (Poets’ Prize), Olives (National Books Critics Circle Award finalist), and Like, a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Earlier this year, she was elected to the prestigious post of Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford.

Scheduled for October 3rd, Stallings’ lecture is titled “Homer's Hippiad: From the First Deaths to the Last Word” and will explore how mules and horses mirror and shadow their human counterparts in Homer’s Iliad. The event is hosted by Princeton’s Classics Department and will be open to the public in person and online. Support for the project is provided in part by Princeton's Departments of Classics and Comparative Literature, the Humanities Council, the Lewis Center for the Arts, Princeton University Public Lectures Committee, Program in Humanistic Studies, and the Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies.

Established in memory of classical translator and University professor Robert Fagles, the Fagles Lecture brings to Princeton distinguished writers or artists whose work engages with classics. In addition to the lecture itself, invited Lecturers also meet with students, participate in undergraduate instruction, and dialogue with faculty in the course of their visits. The inaugural Fagles Lecture was delivered in 2017 by Stallings’ predecessor in the Oxford Professorship, poet Alice Oswald.