Forget Why Poetry Series - Theodora Danylevich, Casey Smith, & Tom Mandel

Forget Why Poetry Series presents a poetry reading with DC poet and educator Theodora Danylevich, artist and arts administrator Casey Smith, and writer Tom Mandel. Their backgrounds span poetry, disability studies, book arts, literary editing, teaching, collaborative autobiography, and experimental writing.

Danylevich teaches writing and disability studies at Georgetown University. Her poems have appeared in *Vanitas* and *Phoebe*, and her interests include short forms, collaboration, and ongoing homophonic translations of ancient epic poems. She also occasionally sings and writes for Jacky Cougar and the Vampyres from Africa.

Smith was born in Pasadena, California, in 1965 and taught for nearly two decades at the Corcoran College of Art + Design. He is now executive director of the Frederick Book Arts Center, and his poems have appeared in various print and online publications.

Mandel is the author or co-author of more than 20 books and chapbooks, including *Realism*, *Letters of the Law*, *To the Cognoscenti*, and *The Grand Piano*, a ten-volume collaborative autobiography created with San Francisco Language Poets. His writing has appeared internationally in newspapers, literary journals, anthologies, *In the American Tree*, the first edition of *The Norton Anthology of Post-Modern Verse*, several volumes of *Best American Poetry*, and the French-language anthology *49+1: Poètes Americain*. He has taught at the University of Chicago, the University of Illinois, and San Francisco State University, where he directed the SFSU Poetry Center. He has also worked as a UNESCO consultant and technology entrepreneur, and was an early advocate for collaborative software and media. A Chicago native, Mandel has lived in New York, Paris, and San Francisco before moving to the Washington, DC, area.

When: Saturday, October 10, 2026

Showtimes: 7:00 PM–10:00 PM

Tickets: $10–20

Venue: Rhizome DC

Lineup: Theodora Danylevich, Casey Smith, and Tom Mandel

Event type: Poetry reading

Ages: Not specified

Accessibility: Not specified