Award-winning poet to read at Ripon

Arthur Stringer, an award-winning poet from West Virginia, will read from his work at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 2, in the North Reading Room of Lane Library on the Ripon College campus. The reading, which is free and open to all, will be followed by a book signing.

Stringer will read from his most recent collection of poems, Late Breaking, published in 2013 by the Irish press Salmon Poetry. His previous books include Human Costume, also from Salmon Poetry, and Channel Markers, published by Wesleyan University Press in their New Poets series. In addition, he has edited and introduced an edition of Louise McNeill’s Paradox Hill (West Virginia University Press).

Stringer’s poems, translations, and reviews have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including American Poetry Review, Antaeus, Denver Quarterly, Poetry Northwest, The Nation and Ohio Review. Other recognitions Stringer has received include an Academy of American Poets Award from the University of Massachusetts, a residency at the McDowell Colony, and the Annual Poetry Award from Colorado State University.

A native of Cleveland, Ohio, Stringer received degrees from Ohio University, Colorado State University and the University of Massachusetts. He taught at several schools and recently retired after more than two decades at Marshall University in Huntington, W.Va. At Marshall, in addition to teaching literature and writing, in 1989 he founded their visiting writers’ series, now renamed the A.E. Stringer Visiting Writers Series in his honor. He has read his poetry at numerous schools around the country and in Ireland.

Critics have found Stringer’s poems to be offbeat, often humorous explorations of a great variety of themes. His work is marked by its economy, word play and understated wisdom. In Books Ireland, critic Rory Brennan writes. “Stringer is a poet of complexity and range. … (He) beckons and invites us into his labyrinth.”

Stringer’s visit is being sponsored by the Ripon College Visiting Writers Series, with assistance from the Schang Family Visiting Writer Fund. For more information, contact David Graham, department of English, at 748-8722.

To learn more about the English Department at Ripon College, click here.

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