April 12, 2005

U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser gives a free reading of his pleasurable and thought-provoking work at UCSB Campbell Hall

Summary Facts:

• Ted Kooser
• The 42nd Edwin & Jean Corle Memorial Lecture
• Kooser is the U.S. Poet Laureate
• He is also the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Delights & Shadows
• Tuesday, May 17 / 8 pm / UCSB Campbell Hall
• Free event
• Information: UCSB Arts & Lectures at (805) 893-3535

U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser, a major voice for rural and small town America and the award-winning author of ten collections of poetry, most recently Delights & Shadows, the 2005 Pulitzer Prize winner for poetry, will read from his work on Tuesday, May 17 at 8 pm at UCSB Campbell Hall. This free event—the 42nd Edwin & Jean Corle Memorial Lecture—is co-presented by the UCSB Libraries and UCSB Arts & Lectures.

Poetry Daily said this about Delights & Shadows: “For more than thirty years Ted Kooser has written poems that deftly bring dissimilar things into telling unities. Throughout a long and distinguished writing career he has worked toward clarity and accessibility, making poetry as fresh and spontaneous as a good watercolor. A gyroscope balanced between a child’s hands, a jar of buttons that recalls generations of women, and a bird briefly witnessed outside a window—each reveals the remarkable within an otherwise ordinary world.” The Georgia Review calls him, “A skilled and cunning writer...an authentic ‘poet of the American people.’”

Ted Kooser is a professor of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He has published ten full-length collections of poetry, including Delights and Shadows (Copper Canyon Press, 2004) and Weather Central (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1994). His works have appeared in many periodicals including The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, Poetry, The Hudson Review, The Nation, American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, and Antioch Review. Koosers’ poems are included in textbooks and anthologies used in both secondary schools and college classrooms across the country. He has received two NEA fellowships in poetry, the Pushcart Prize, the Stanley Kunitz Prize, The James Boatwright Prize, and a Merit Award from the Nebraska Arts Council.

In addition to poetry, Kooser has written in a variety of forms including plays, fiction, personal essays and literary criticism. His first book of prose Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps (University of Nebraska Press, 2002) won the Nebraska Book Award for Nonfiction in 2003 and Third Place in the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award in Nonfiction for 2002. The book was chosen as the Best Book Written by a Midwestern Writer for 2002 by Friends of American Writers. It also won the Gold Award for Autobiography in ForeWord Magazine’s Book of the Year Awards.

In February 2005 the University of Nebraska Press published his newest book The Poetry Home Repair Manual. In the book Kooser provides tools, insights, and instructions (and warnings against instructions) that poets—aspiring or practicing—can use to hone their craft, perhaps into art. More than a guidebook to writing and revising poems, this manual has all the comforts and merits of a long and enlightening conversation with a wise and patient old friend—a friend who is willing to share everything he’s learned about the art he’s spent a lifetime learning to execute so well. David Mason wrote in The Weekly Standard, “Kooser’s book is quietly witty and iconoclastic, with valuable advice....He presents a whole stance toward writing in the context of living one’s life. The Poetry Home Repair Manual is brief, lucid, and often remarkably wise.”

Born in Ames, Iowa, in 1939, Kooser earned a BS at Iowa State University in 1962 and an MA at the University of Nebraska in 1968. He is a former vice-president of the Lincoln Benefit Life, where he worked as an insurance representative for many years. He lives on an acreage near the town of Garland, Nebraska, with his wife, Kathleen Rutledge, and dogs, Alice and Howard. He also has a son, Jeff, and a granddaughter, Margaret.

This event replaces the scheduled reading by Robert Creeley, who passed away on March 30 at age 78 due to complications of pneumonia.

Courtesy of Borders, books by Ted Kooser will be available for purchase and signing at the event.

Ted Kooser is presented by the UCSB Libraries and UCSB Arts & Lectures.

For tickets or more information,
call UCSB Arts & Lectures at (805) 893-3535.

Editor: For photos, please call
George Yatchisin at (805) 893-3494.