Former Poet Laureate Reads, Visits at COA

BAR HARBOR — Charles Simic, former poet laureate of the United States, will give a reading at College of the Atlantic (COA) on Wednesday, Aug. 4, beginning at 6 p.m. in the Gates Community Center. On Thursday, Aug. 5 Mr. Simic will participate in an informal public conversation beginning at 9 a.m. in the college’s Deering Common Campus Center.

Mr. Simic received the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for poetry, a MacArthur Foundation genius grant, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. “His poetry is known for its visceral surprises, frequently referencing his childhood in Yugoslavia during World War II,” said COA spokesman Donna Gold.

The reading on Wednesday night will be introduced by COA faculty member, poet and novelist Bill Carpenter. On Thursday morning, COA lecturer and poet Candace Stover will engage Mr. Simic in a discussion about writing as part of the college’s Coffee and Conversation series.

Praise for Mr. Simic abounds. Writing in the Chicago Review, Victor Contoski calls Mr. Simic’s work, “some of the most strikingly original poetry of our time, a poetry shockingly stark in its concepts, imagery, and language.” According to Georgia Review’s Peter Stitt, “He is one of the wisest poets of his generation, and one of the best.”

Born in 1938, Mr. Simic’s childhood years were spent fleeing the fighting in his nation. “My travel agents were Hitler and Stalin,” he once wrote. His family emigrated to the United States when he was 15, and he attended high school in Chicago. Mr. Simic and began publishing in 1959, when he was 21. After serving in the army, he earned his bachelor’s degree from New York University in 1966. He was appointed poet laureate in 2007, and is emeritus professor of the University of New Hampshire where he has taught since 1973.

Mr. Simic has written 20 books of poetry and has translated many more. Among his poetry volumes are “That Little Something” (2008); “Selected Poems: 1963-2003” (2004), for which he received the 2005 International Griffin Poetry Prize; “Jackstraws” (1999), named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year; “Walking the Black Cat” (1996), a finalist for the National Book Award; and his Pulitzer Prize-winning “The World Doesn’t End: Prose Poems” (1990).

According to the website of the Poetry Foundation, www.poetryfoundation.org, “Some poems reflect a surreal, metaphysical bent and others offer grimly realistic portraits of violence and despair,” while some of his best-known works, “challenge the dividing line between the ordinary and extraordinary.”

For more information about Mr. Simic’s appearances at COA, call 288-5015.

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