Events

The public is invited to hear Oregon Poet Laureate Paulann Petersen speak at the Friends of Hannon Library annual membership reception, May 12, 2011, 5:00 PM, in the library’s Meese Meeting Room (#305). Refreshments will be served. Following a short business meeting, Paulann Petersen will begin at 6:00 PM speaking on “What We Can Learn from Walt Whitman and Nazim Hikmet.”

Petersen’s talk about the work of Walt Whitman, 19th century American poet, essayist, and journalist, and 20th century Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet, who spent much of his adult life in prison, will include reading from her latest book of poems, The Voluptuary, which was heavily influenced by Whitman and also translations of Hikmet and her poems about him.

Paulann Petersen is the author of four chapbooks and a full-length collection of poems. Petersen is a former Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and the recipient of Oregon Literary Arts’ 2006 Holbrook Award. She has taught poetry workshops for colleges, libraries, and writers’ conferences including Fishtrap, Mountain Writers Series, Oregon State Poetry Association, the Creative Arts Community at Menucha, Northwest Writing Institute, and others. Petersen’s appointment follows former Oregon Poet Laureate Lawson Fusao Inada.