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FARMINGTON – Wesley McNair, professor Emeritus and Writer in Residence at the University of Maine at Farmington, will launch his new book, Lovers of the Lost: New & Selected Poems, 7:30 p.m. on April 1 at UMF. His reading will take place at The Landing in the Student Center and is free and open to the public.
Lovers of the Lost represents over 40 years of McNair’s poetry, described by the Ruminator Review as “one of the most individual bodies of work by a poet of his generation.” His poems have also drawn praise from a number of poets.
Maxine Kumin has called him “a master craftsman,” Donald Hall, “a true poet,” and Philip Levine, “one of the great storytellers of contemporary poetry.”
Several of the narratives of his new book are derived from the people and rural life of the Farmington area, where many of his poems have been written.
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The recipient of numerous prizes for his poetry, Wesley McNair has held grants from the Guggenheim and Fulbright foundations, two Rockefeller fellowships, and two grants in creative writing from the National Endowment for the Arts.
He recently read his poems at the Library of Congress and was selected for a United States Artists Fellowship as one of “America’s finest living artists.”
A guest editor in poetry for the 2010 Pushcart Prize anthology, McNair has served four times on the nominating jury for the Pulitzer Prize in poetry. He has written or edited 18 books, including anthologies, essays and poetry.
