Leading poets from across America, including Rachel Hadas, David Yezzi, Annie Finch, Wyatt Prunty, Kate Light and Phillis Levin, together with Dante translators Robert and Jean Hollander and Michael Palma, will join hundreds of poetry lovers at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine for the annual reading of Dante’s Inferno, Thursday, April 5 from 9 p.m. to midnight.

The reading occurs during the Maundy Thursday vigil, the very hours Dante intended the events in the epic poem to take place. Join Cathedral Dean The Very Rev. Dr. James A. Kowalski, Cathedral Poet-in-Residence Charles Martin, and friends of Dante as they celebrate him by reading selections from the epic poem. The moving and dramatic literary and liturgical event concludes at midnight as Cathedral Organist Timothy J. Brumfield fills the great sacred space with an organ improvisation.