Press Release: Reading by Michael Collier, Poet Laureate of Maryland

Michael Collier, Poet Laureate of Maryland, will present a reading of his works on Monday, April 15, 2002 at 4:00 p.m. in the UMBC Library Gallery. This free event is followed by a reception and is open to the public. It is sponsored by the UMBC Friends of the Library & Gallery as part of its BookNotes series and in celebration of National Poetry Month.

About the author:

Michael Collier’s poems have appeared in The Atlantic, The Nation, The New Republic, The New Yorker, Ploughshares, Poetry, and many other magazines and periodicals. He has published four collections of poetry: The Clasp and Other Poems, The Folded Heart, and The Neighbor. His most recent book, The Ledge (published in 2000), was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. He has edited three anthologies as well: The Wesleyan Tradition: Four Decades of Contemporary American Poetry, The New Bread Loaf Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry (co-edited with Stanley Plumy), and The New American Poets: A Bread Loaf Anthology. He also writes a monthly poetry column for the Baltimore Sun.

Collier has received a Pushcart Prize, two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Alice Fay di Castagnola Prize from the Poetry Society of America, and a Discovery/The Nation Award. Seminal to his development as a poet were the Thomas J. Watson Traveling Fellowship and a residency fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown.

Since 1995 Collier has served as the sixth director of the 76-year-old Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, where he has helped to revitalize one of America’s most valuable literary institutions.

As a UMCP faculty member, a resident of Catonsville, and a user of the UMBC Library, Mr. Collier has many connections with our community. At the University of Maryland, College Park, Department of English where he has worked since 1984, he is co-director of the Creative Writing Program. He has given many readings in the region, and especially in the high schools, to encourage students to become excited about poetry. Governor Parris Glendening has described him as “a Maryland treasure.”

For further information on this and other UMBC Friends of the Library & Gallery events, see our web page at http://aok.lib.umbc.edu/news/currentevents.php, email libadmin@lists.umbc.edu or call 410.455.2356.

admin/friends/press releases/collier rev

2/12/02 (MC & LW)