November 14, 2005 Poet John Haines to Read on Dec. 8

Distinguished poet and essayist John Haines will read his poems at the Library of Congress at 6:45 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 8, in the Mumford Room on the sixth floor of the James Madison Building at 101 Independence Ave. S.E., Washington, D.C. Ted Kooser, the U.S. Poet Laureate, will introduce Haines.

The program, presented under the auspices of the Gertrude Clarke Whittall Poetry and Literature Fund, is free and open to the public; tickets are not required.

Haines, who spent many years homesteading in the Alaskan wilderness, is the author of more than 10 collections of poetry. His recent works include “For the Century’s End: Poems 1990-1999” (University of Washington Press, 2001), “At the End of This Summer: Poems 1948-1954” (Copper Canyon Press, 1997), “The Owl in the Mask of the Dreamer” (1993) and “New Poems 1980-1988” (1990), for which he received the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize and the Western States Book Award.

He also published a collection of essays titled “Fables and Distances: New and Selected Essays” (1996) and a memoir, “The Stars, the Snow, the Fire: Twenty-five Years in the Northern Wilderness” (1989).

Born in 1924 in Norfolk, Va., Haines studied at the National Art School, American University and the Hans Hoffmann School of Fine Art. He currently lives in Montana. He has taught at Ohio University, George Washington University and the University of Cincinnati.

His awards and honors include the Academy of American Poets Fellowship, the Alaska Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, two Guggenheim Fellowships, the Amy Lowell Traveling Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship.