Poet Mark Doty to Read at USU

The only American poet to have won Great Britain’s T.S. Eliot Prize is the next guest in Utah State University’s Department of English Speaker Series.


Poet Mark Doty will read from his work at 7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 6, at the Haight Alumni Center (approximately 650 N. 800 East, Logan) on the USU campus. Doty is also part of a panel discussion Friday, Nov. 7, at 2 p.m., at the same location. Both events are free, and all are invited.

 

Doty is the author of six books of poems. The first, Turtle, Swan, appeared in 1987. His third collection, My Alexandria (1993), received both the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Since then he has published Atlantis (1995), Sweet Machine (1998) and Source (2001), as well as the memoirs Heaven’s Coast (1996) and Firebird (1999).

 

His interest in the visual arts is evident not only in his poems but also in his book-length essay Still Life with Oysters and Lemon (2001). His newest critically acclaimed volume of poems, School of the Arts, was published in 2005 by HarperCollins.

 

Among his many other awards are two NEA fellowships, Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundation fellowships, a Lila Wallace/Readers Digest Award and the Witter Byner Prize.

 

“Mark Doty’s poems extend the range of the American lyric,” the Witter Byner Prize citation said.

 

Doty teaches in the graduate program at the University of Houston and is a frequent guest at Columbia University, Hunter College and NYU. He lives in Houston and New York City.

 

The USU Department of English Speakers Series, part of the Caine School of the Arts, was established to promote the value of arts and humanities in American public life. The series features faculty writing and research accomplishments and noted visiting authors and scholars sharing their work. Next up is South African poet and scholar Gabeba Baderoon, who is featured in four public events — a reading from her work at 11:30 a.m. Monday, Nov. 10, in the USU Haight Alumni Center; a master class for poets in the USU Caine Room (FL 212) Monday, Nov. 10; a lecture, “Slavery, Islam and the Construction of Race and Sexuality in South Africa” in the USU Merrill-Cazier library room 101 Tuesday, Nov 7; and a poetry reading Tuesday, Nov. 7, at 7 p.m. at Sky View High School. The reading at Sky View is in conjunction with the series Global Odysseys: Literary Explorations of Our Intercultural World.

 

For more information on the Department of English Lecture Series, contact Marina Hall, (435) 797-3858 or email marina.hall@usu.edu.

 

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Contact: Marina Hall (435) 797-3858, marina.hall@usu.edu
Writer: Shannon Horrocks, Shannon.h@aggiemail.usu.edu