RELEASED: Mar. 11, 2004

DANVILLE, KY—The Centre College English program will sponsor a poetry reading by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Charles Wright, the Souder Family Professor of English at the University of Virginia, on March 18 at 7 p.m. in Weisiger Theatre.

The event is part of the Centre College Reading Series, sponsored by the English program. The reading is free to the public.

Wright's poems reflect deeply on human concerns, truth, nature and death. He became fascinated with poetry when he served in the army. While stationed in Verona, Italy, he began reading the poetry of Ezra Pound and Eugenio Monte and was so taken by these poems that he began to experiment with his own.

After retiring from the army, he returned to the U.S. to study poetry at the University of Iowa, where he earned a master's degree. A few years later, Wright had progressed to become one of the most famous and heralded poets in America, highlighted by his winning a Pulitzer in 1998.

Wright's poetry has often been labeled impressionistic, combining images from the natural world, Catholicism and the rural South.

Lisa Williams, poet and assistant professor of English at Centre, says, "To my mind, Wright is one of our greatest contemporary poets. I admire the musicality and beauty of his poetry, and his complete lack of pretension, even as he meditates on some of the great questions of existence."

Wright has published 14 collections of poetry and has received the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award of Merit Medal, and a MacArthur Fellowship, among many other honors and awards. He received the Pulitzer Prize in 1998 for his collection of poems, Black Zodiac, which also won the Los Angeles Times Book &Mac250;Prize.

Wright's most recent collection of poetry, Buffalo Yoga, will be released in April.

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