This year’s annual poetry reading celebrating Oregon's late poet laureate, William Stafford, will be held Thursday, January 19, 7:00 P.M. at the Meese Meeting Room #305 in the Hannon Library, SOU. The public is invited to attend this free event cosponsored by Friends of Hannon Library and Friends of William Stafford.
Poets from eighteen to eighty will be featured including Eugene poets Ingrid Wendt and Ralph Salisbury, who will be reading Stafford’s work and their own. Wendt has received many awards including the 1988 Oregon Book Award for Poetry. Her most recent book is Evensong (Truman State University Press, 2010). Salisbury’s work in poetry, short stories, and essays is considered a precursor to the contemporary Native American literary movement. His tenth book of poems is Light from a Bullet Hole: Poems New & Selected 1950-2008 (Silverfish Review Press, 2009). Both Wendt and Salisbury were close friends of William Stafford.
Other featured poets will be Kasey Mohammad, Marisa Petersen, Michael Holstein, and Lucia Hadella. Audience members who bring a favorite William Stafford poem will also be invited to read. The program will conclude with a showing of the short film “Every War Has Two Losers” based on Stafford's journals.
Each January, poetry readings are held across the U.S. and throughout the world during William Stafford’s birthday month. Though it has been eighteen years since Stafford’s death, his audience continues to increases and new books of his work are still being published.
For further information, contact Patty Wixon, vpwixon@opendoor.com, or Hannon Library, 541-552-6816.
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