Acclaimed Poet to Share Provoking Works April 2

VALDOSTA -- Acclaimed poet Dorianne Laux will share her works at 7:30 p.m. Friday, April 2, in the University Center. 阅读, which is free and open to the public, is meant to expose people to enriching and thoughtful 的想法s and challenge them to think deeply about their 文化 and purpose.

The author of four poetic volumes, Laux’s latest book “Facts about the Moon” won the Oregon Book Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. The English professor at North Carolina University was a sanatorium cook, a gas station manager, a maid, and a donut holer before receiving a bachelor’s degree in English from Mills College in 1988. Many of her accessible and provoking works are derived from her motley past.

Dr. Marty Williams, bet365亚洲官网 English professor, said the department participates in the Georgia 诗歌 Circuit to ensure that the university community hears poetic voices from across the nation as a way to deepen their educational and cultural experience.

“Institutionally, bringing 诗人, authors, artists, and guest speakers to the university fulfills key elements of the bet365亚洲官网 mission to maintain ‘a commitment to scholarly and creative work’ and to pursue activities that ‘aid the educational, economic, cultural, and social advancement of its region,’” Williams said. “访问 writers, artists, and other speakers challenge students, faculty, and community alike to think deeply about why we're here and how we make the world better.”

Laux, who spends her summers teaching poetry workshops in Italy and Guatemala, is the recipient of a variety of prizes, including two Best American 诗歌 prizes, and fellowships such as The National Endowment for the Arts and a Guggenheim. Her work has appeared in the Best of the American 诗歌 Review, The Norton Anthology of Contemporary 诗歌 and Best of the Net; and she is a frequent contributor to magazines, including the New York Quarterly, Orion 和女士. 杂志.

Williams said Laux is visiting at an 的想法l time, as literary buffs celebration National 诗歌 Month in April. 诗歌's roots are both “as ancient as language and as contemporary as conversation,” 威廉说. Readings, book displays and workshops are wonderful ways to celebrate poetry and its vital place in American 文化.

“It is art that comes out of the body,” Williams said. 我们都知道 poetry even if we don't know we know it. In its more popular forms, it can make its way into the music we listen to daily, like Wyn Cooper's poem ‘Fun’; while in its most earnest forms, it can be the grounding for a nation's 文化 -- The Illiad, for example. 诗歌 means "making" in its original Greek, so it works to make the 变sayable. 诗歌 at its best is new speech, or speech made anew, even when it covers what one might think is an old 的想法.”

Read more about Laux at www.诗人.org/poet.php / prmPID / 742 or flip through one of her works: “Awake” (1990), “What We Carry” (1994), Smoke (2000), “Facts 关于 the Moon” (2005), and “Superman: The Chapbook (2008).