The University of Massachusetts
Amherst MFA for Poets and Writers presents an evening of poetry with U.S. Poet
Laureate, Charles Wright on October 23rd at 8pm in the Bernie Dallas Room in
Goodell Hall. Mr. Wright will be introduced by Robert Casper (MFA, class of
2004), Head of the Poetry and Literature Center at the Library of Congress.
In June 2014, Mr.
Wright was named Poet Laureate of the United States. Dr. James H. Billington,
Librarian of Congress, praises Mr. Wright’s “combination
of literary elegance and genuine humility.” Wright’s work displays “an infinite
array of beautiful words reflected with constant freshness.”
James
Tate, Pulitzer Prize winner, and MFA faculty said, “Charles Wright lives in a
world of stars and stags and butterflies, then there are the streams and there
is the long-gone past. So what’s a poet going to do? Fall down and worship, or
just keep walking on? Come see Wright on October 23.” The MFA for Poets and
Writers is proud to bring such a prolific American voice to campus.
Mr.
Wright is the author of 24 poetry collections, two books of essays, and three
books of translation. His honors include the Pulitzer Prize, National Book
Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, Bollingen Prize, Ruth Lilly Prize
from the Poetry Foundation, and the International Griffin Poetry Prize, as well
as the 2008 Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize in Poetry from the Library
of Congress. Most recently, Mr. Wright published the collection Caribou (2014), which Publishers Weekly
describes as "a dexterous balance of lightness in dark . . . rife with
nihilism, humor, and beauty."
Mr. Wright’s reading is part of the MFA
program’s Visiting Writers Series. Celebrating its fifty-first year, the
nationally renowned Visiting Writers Series at UMass Amherst presents emerging
and established writers of poetry, fiction and non-fiction. The Series is
sponsored by the MFA for Poets and Writers and the Juniper Initiative, and made
possible by support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the University of
Massachusetts Arts Council, the College of Humanities & Fine Arts, and the
English Department.
The
reading is free and open to the public. For more information, please visit
www.umass.edu/English/MFA_VWS.htm.