National Book Award-winning poet Nikky Finney is the next featured speaker in the Hall Center for the Humanities’ 2012-13 Humanities Lecture Series.

Finney will present “Making Poetry in Our Anthropocene Age” at 7:30 p.m. Thursday in Woodruff Auditorium at the Kansas Union, 1301 Jayhawk Blvd. The event is free and open to the public. For more information, visit hallcenter.ku.edu.

The Hall Center has scheduled an additional event, “A Conversation with Nikky Finney,” for 10 a.m. Friday in the Hall Center’s Conference Hall, 900 Sunnyside Ave.

“Anthropocene” is a term coined to suggest that humans now act as a geophysical force changing the climate of the planet and ushering in a new geological period, according to the Hall Center’s announcement. Finney explores damage done to the ecosystem and how the Anthropocene matters to the intersections between humans, the natural world, art and culture.

Finney, born in South Carolina to activist parents, came of age during the civil rights and Black Arts movement. She attended Talladega College, has authored four books of poetry, co-founded the Affrilachian Poets and works as a creative writing professor at the University of Kentucky. She won the 2011 National Book Award for poetry for her fourth book, “Head Off and Split.”