FARMINGTON – Theodora J. Kalikow, president of University of Maine at Farmington, invites the public to a gala celebration to honor Wes McNair, Maine’s new State Poet Laureate. The reception will be held from 3-5 p.m., Monday, April 11, in the Richard T. and Judith F. Bjorn Lobby of the UMF Education Center, on High Street, in Farmington.
“We are thrilled to honor Wes in his appointment to this distinguished position,” said Kalikow. “His poetry has captured the lives and hearts of Mainers throughout his career, bringing the powerful tradition of verse into people’s everyday lives. He will make a wonderful ambassador for the written word in Maine.”
During the reception, McNair will give a short reading of poems that have been suggested by members of the UMF community —faculty, staff and administration. McNair was named Maine’s Poet Laureate by Governor Paul LePage on Friday, March 11, at the Poetry Out Loud State Finals in Lewiston. He is Maine’s fourth poet laureate since the post was first established in 1995.
Award-winning poet and University of Maine at Farmington professor emeritus and writer in residence, McNair is the author of 18 books, including poetry, prose and edited anthologies. His most recent collection of poems, “Lovers of the Lost: New & Selected Poems” (Godine, 2010), was launched at UMF’s Visiting Writers Series in 2010.
The recipient of numerous prizes for his poetry, McNair has received grants from the Guggenheim and Fulbright foundations, the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. In 2006 he 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. McNair is “one of the great storytellers of contemporary poetry,” according to Philip Levine, considered to be one of the elder statesmen of contemporary American poetry today. Included among McNair’s many honors are the Robert Frost Prize, the Theodore Roethke Prize, the Jane Kenyon Award for Outstanding Book, the Sarah Josepha Hale Medal for “distinguished contribution to the world of letters” and three honorary degrees.
At UMF, he directed the creative writing program and shared his love of poetry with his students, colleagues and the wider community. In addition, Wes was instrumental in inviting Alice James Books, an award-winning poetry press, to take up residence at UMF. He was the recipient of both the UMF Distinguished Faculty Award and the Libra Professorship and currently serves as a guest faculty member for UMF’s Longfellow Mountains Young Writers summer workshop.
The reception for McNair is proudly co-sponsored by Alice James Books, the Beloit Poetry Journal and the University of Maine at Farmington – home to Maine’s only Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program and the Longfellow Mountains Young Writers Workshop.
