|
  |
||||||
| |||||||
For Immediate Release Contact: Barbara Verchot U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser to provide invocations in form of a poem at State Legislature on March 17 PORTLAND, Ore. Literary Arts is pleased to announce that Ted Kooser, current U.S. Poet Laureate at the Library of Congress, will provide the invocation in the form of a poem at the opening of the floor sessions of the Oregon House and Oregon Senate in Salem on Thursday, March 17, 2005. This unique event was arranged in cooperation with the Oregon State Library and the Oregon Arts Commission. Kooser is in Oregon to open Literary Arts' 5th annual Poetry Downtown series in Portland later that same evening. Kooser's appearances coincide with plans to reinstate a poet laureate in Oregon made possible by the Oregon Cultural Trust and a special partnership between the Oregon Arts Commission, the Oregon Council for the Humanities, the State Historic Preservation Office, the Oregon Historical Society and the Oregon Heritage Commission. First Lady Mary Oberst now chairs a special selection committee that will identify a new laureate. The new laureate will be announced within the next few months. Ted Kooser, from Nebraska, is the first poet from the Great Plains to hold the distinguished position of U. S. Poet Laureate. The author of ten collections of poetry, Poetry Magazine captures the poet best when it says "Kooser documents the dignities, habits and small griefs of daily life, our hunger for connection, our struggle to find balance in natural and unnaturally human worlds." The fifth annual Poetry Downtown series, which features leading contemporary poets reading in an intimate downtown setting also presents W.S. Merwin on Tuesday, March 29, 2005; Maxine Kumin on Tuesday, April 12, 2005; August Kleinzahler on Tuesday, April 26, 2005. The readings will take place in the Atrium of the award winning Wieden+Kennedy building (224 NW 13th Ave) in the Pearl District. All readings take place at 7:30 p.m.; a question and answer session and book signing follow each reading. Series tickets: General Admission $65; Senior/College student $48. Single tickets: General Admission $18; Senior/College student $12; High School student $5. To order tickets, call Literary Arts at 503 227 2583 or order online at www.literary arts.org. Portland Arts & Lectures (a program of Literary Arts) produces the Poetry Downtown series, VERB:Literature in Performance and a variety of Special Events. Literary Arts is a statewide, nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting the importance of language as a means to express, explore and experience the world in which we live. The programs of Literary Arts are the Oregon Book Awards, Oregon Literary Fellowships, Poetry Downtown, Poetry In Motion7, Portland Arts & Lectures and Writers in the Schools. For more information about any of these programs, please contact Barbara Verchot at 503.227 Literary Arts is supported, in part, with grant funds from the Oregon Arts Commission. Dated for freshness! Page last updated May 02, 2008 |
|||||||
| |||||||
