Montgomery County 2010 Poet Laureate to be Named April 16
GLENSIDE, PA—March 31, 2010―Arcadia University will host the 2010 Celebration of the Montgomery County Poet Laureateship program on Friday, April 16, beginning at 6:30 p.m. in the Grand Hall of Grey Towers Castle with a book sale, refreshments and live music. At 7:30 p.m. the program moves to the Castle Mirror Room where this year’s Poet Laureate will be announced. The program is free and open to the public. Arcadia University is located at 450 S. Easton Road, Glenside, Pa.
For more information, contact Executive Director Joanna Leva at the poet laureate Web site: www.a2pwebdesign.com/joanneleva.
This year’s competition will be judged by celebrated poet Robert Bly. Bly will present the laureate award to this year’s winner and also will give a reading of his own work. His work, Iron John: A Book About Men, an international bestseller, has been translated into many languages.
Bly’s biography www.robertbly.com states that he co-founded American Writers Against the Vietnam War in 1966 and led much of the opposition among writers to that war. When he won the National Book Award for The Light Around the Body, he contributed the prize money to the Resistance. During the 70s he published eleven books of poetry, essays, and translations, celebrating the power of myth, Indian ecstatic poetry, meditation, and storytelling. During the 80s he published Loving a Woman in Two Worlds, The Wingéd Life: Selected Poems and Prose of Thoreau, The Man in the Black Coat Turns, and A Little Book on the Human Shadow.
In the early 90s, with James Hillman and Michael Meade, he edited The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart, an anthology of poems dealing with men’s issues. Since then he has edited The Darkness Around Us Is Deep: Selected Poems of William Stafford, and The Soul Is Here for Its Own Joy, a collection of sacred poetry from many cultures.
Recent books of poetry include What Have I Ever Lost by Dying? Collected Prose Poems and Meditations on the Insatiable Soul, both published by Harper Collins. His second large prose book, The Sibling Society, published in 1996 by Addison-Wesley in hardcover and Vintage in paperback, has been the subject of nation-wide discussion. His collection, Morning Poems (Harper Collins), named for William Stafford’s practice of writing a poem each morning, revisits the western Minnesota farm country of Bly’s boyhood with marvelous wit and warmth. He has recently published The Maiden King: The Reunion of Masculine and Feminine (Henry Holt) in collaboration with Marion Woodman. His new selected poems, Eating the Honey of Words, has recently appeared from Harper Flamingo, as well as his translations of Ghalib, The Lightning Should Have Fallen on Ghalib (with Sunil Dutta) from Ecco Press. He has also edited the prestigious Best American Poetry 1999 (Scribners).
About Arcadia University: Arcadia University is a top-ranked private university in metropolitan Philadelphia and a national leader in study abroad, ranked #1 in undergraduate participation in study abroad (Open Doors 2009). Arcadia University promises a distinctively global, integrative and personal learning experience that prepares students to contribute and prosper in a diverse and dynamic world. U.S. News & World Report ranks Arcadia University among the top master’s universities in the North, as one of the top study abroad programs in the nation, and as a “top up-and-coming school.” The Physical Therapy program is ranked 7th in the nation.
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