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Monday, October 13, 2003
2003 VERSE FESTIVAL BRINGS POETS TO UGA CAMPUS
OCTOBER 23-24, 2003Verse magazine, the English Department Lanier Speakers Series, and the UGA Creative Writing Program will sponsor the 2003 Verse Festival on Thursday and Friday, October 23-24. The 2003 Verse Festival will bring six acclaimed poets to the UGA campus for readings. Readings are open to the public and will be held in the Student Learning Center and at Flicker Theater in Athens.
Invited poets include: James Tate, Richard Meier, Mary Jo Bang, Timothy Donnelly, Dara Wier, and Matthew Zapruder, who will give readings and visit creative writing classes. On Thursday, October 23, Richard Meier and Matthew Zapruder will read at 4:30 p.m. in Room 248 of the Student Learning Center on the UGA campus; Mary Jo Bang and Timothy Donnelly will read at 6 p.m. at Flicker Theater, 263 West Washington Street in downtown Athens. On Friday, October 24, Dara Wier and James Tate will read at 4:30 p.m. in Room 150 of the Student Learning Center.
Richard Meier is the author of Terrain Vague, winner of the 2001 Verse Prize. Matthew Zapruder is the author of American Linden. His poems have appeared in magazines such as Boston Review, Fence, The Harvard Review, and The New Yorker. Mary Jo Bang is the author of three books of poetry including The Downstream Extremity of the Isle of Swans from UGA Press and Louise in Love from Grove Press. She was the recipient of the 1996 Bakeless Prize. She teaches at Washington University in St. Louis. Timothy Donnelly is the author of Twenty-Seven Props for a Production of Eine Lebenszeit from Grove Press. He is currently a PhD candidate in English at Princeton University.
Dara Wier is the author of eight books of poetry including Hat on a Pond from Verse Press. She has received fellowships from the NEA and Guggenhiem Foundation. James Tate is the author of fifteen books of poetry, most recently Memoir of the Hawk (HarperCollins). His Selected Poems received the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, and Worshipful Company of Fletchers won the 1994 National Book Award for Poetry. His first book, The Lost Pilot, won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award in 1967. He also has received Guggenheim and NEA fellowships as well as the Academy of American Poets' Tanning Prize for Lifetime Achievement in Poetry. Tate edited The Best American Poetry 1997, and he has published a book of short stories, Dreams of a Robot Dancing Bee, published in 2002 by Verse Press.
This is the second time that Brian Henry, Associate Professor of English at UGA and Editor of Verse magazine, has organized the Verse Festival. The first Verse Festival was held in September 2001. "Verse is devoted to publishing younger and emerging poets as well as more established poets," Henry says. "The 2003 Verse Festival line-up is a wonderful mix of poets who already have received international acclaim, strong poets in mid-career, and exciting younger poets. That kind of cross-over is an important aspect of the magazine and should make this year's Verse Festival particularly dynamic."