Celebrated poet Jane Springer, a National Endowment for the Arts grant recipient and Whiting Writers’ Award winner who teaches literature and creative writing at Hamilton College in upstate New York, will present a poetry reading when she visits Salve Regina’s campus next week.
The reading and reception will be presented on Thursday, April 21 at 6 p.m. in Ochre Court, 100 Ochre Point Ave. Hosted by the university’s English and communications department in observance of National Poetry Month, the event is free and open to the public.
Springer, a Tennessee native who grew up in several small towns across the south, won the Agha Shahid Ali Prize from the University of Utah Press for her debut poetry collection, “Dear Blackbird” (2007). Her second collection, “Murder Ballad” (2012) received the Beatrice Hawley Award from Alice James Books.
She says of her work: “The landscapes and stories of folks in and around the towns I come from seem too small and fleeting for notation in conventional history books; when viewed as integral to a long tradition of pastorals that Theocritus began, they seem more lyrically epic, somehow: more as I see them.”
Springer will host a book signing after the reading, and refreshments will be served.