Former poet laureate Pinsky to speak May 2

Robert Pinsky, poet laureate of the United States from 1997-2000, will speak on campus Wednesday, May 2, as part of the Union Directorate’s Distinguished Lecture Series and to help the UW-Madison library system celebrate the acquisition of its six millionth book.

The free public talk, “Celebrating Books and Poetry with Robert Pinsky,” will be at 7:30 p.m. in the Wisconsin Union Theater, 800 Langdon St. Free tickets will be available to the public beginning Friday, April 27.

Pinsky, poetry editor of online journal Slate, contributes to PBS’s “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer” and teaches in the graduate writing program at Boston University. His most recent book of poetry is “Jersey Rain.”

In 1999, Norton published the anthology “Americans’ Favorite Poems,” a collection featured in Pinsky’s Favorite Poems Project. Pinsky’s writing has won awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.

Pinsky’s visit caps the semester-long “Celebrating Books” events that commemorate the acquisition of the UW–Madison’s six millionth book. The book, Dard Hunter’s “Papermaking by Hand in America,” was unveiled April 18 at a lecture by Kenneth Frazier, libraries director. The book was selected for its strong connections to Wisconsin and the papermaking industry.

If attendance for the May 2 lecture exceeds theater capacity, there will be a video simulcast in Memorial Union. For more information, contact Don Johnson, (608) 262-0076, djohnson@library.wisc.edu