October 23, 2005 Author George Garrett to Read His Poems on Nov. 10

Former Virginia Poet Laureate George Garrett will read his poems at the Library of Congress at 6:45 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 10, in the Mumford Room on the sixth floor of the James Madison Memorial Building, 101 Independence Ave. S.E., Washington, D.C.

U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser will introduce Garrett. The program, presented under the auspices of the Gertrude Clarke Whittall Poetry and Literature Fund, is free and open to the public; no tickets or reservations are required.

Garrett was named the poet laureate of Virginia in 2002. He is the author of more than 30 books of poetry, fiction, essays, criticism, plays and screenplays, and he is the Henry Hoyns Professor Emeritus at the University of Virginia.

Born in Orlando, Fla., Garrett received undergraduate and graduate degrees from Princeton University and subsequently served in the U.S. Army. He was professor of creative writing and literature at Hollins College, Princeton University, the University of Michigan, the University of South Carolina and the University of Virginia, where he taught writing from 1962 to 1967 and returned to take the Henry Hoyns Professorship in 1984, retiring in 2000.

His collections of poetry include “The Days of Our Lives Lie in Fragments: New and Old Poems, 1957-1997” (1998), “The King of Babylon Shall Not Come Against You” (1996) and “The Poison Pen or Live Now and Pay Later” (1986). Garrett is the editor of many collections of poetry and prose; a recent collection is “The Yellow Shoe Poets: Selected Poems, 1964-1999” (1999).

Garrett’s novels include the historical trilogy “Death of the Fox” (1971), a life of Sir Walter Raleigh; “The Succession: A Novel of Elizabeth and James” (1983), exploring the succession to the throne of King James I; and “Entered from the Sun” (1990), a novel about the murder of playwright Christopher Marlowe.

His awards and honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Sabbatical Fellowship, a Ford Foundation Grant, the Rome Prize of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the T.S. Eliot Award, the PEN/Malamud Award for Short Fiction and the Commonwealth of Virginia Governor’s Award for the Arts.