Submitted by Saint Martins University
LACEY, Wash. – Saint Martin’s University will welcome award-winning poet Bruce Beasley for a reading from his latest poetry collection, Theophobia, beginning at 4 p.m. Wednesday, March 20, in the Benedictine Reading Room of O’Grady Library on Saint Martin’s Lacey campus, 5300 Pacific Avenue SE. The event is free and open to the public.
Beasley, an English professor at Western Washington University and the author of seven collections of poems, will also lead a discussion about the steps involved in the process of writing.
“Student writers from throughout the community, even if they are not poets, can learn useful tips from Professor Beasley on how to put their ideas onto paper, and then organize them into a full creative work ready for publication,” says Tannia King, president of Saint Martin’s chapter of Sigma Tau Delta, the English honor society.
As a Catholic institution in the Benedictine tradition, Saint Martin’s is the perfect setting for a reading by Beasley, who is well known as a Catholic poet, according to Jamie Olson, Ph.D., assistant professor of English and faculty sponsor for Sigma Tau Delta.
“The ornate yet vigorous language of Beasley’s poetry has always been driven by his engagement with the world of ideas,” Olson says. “His continued emphasis on the Christian intellectual tradition is something that should resonate deeply with our community.”
Calling Beasley a profound thinker and moving writer, Olson adds the English Department is excited about his visit.
Beasley’s previous collection, Lord Brain, an extended meditation on neuroscience, cosmology, theology and language, won the University of Georgia Press Contemporary Poetry Series Award in 2005. Beasley also won the 1996 Colorado Prize for Poetry and the 1994 Ohio State University Press/Journal Award. He has won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Artist Trust of Washington, as well as three Pushcart Prizes in poetry. Beasley’s work appears in The Pushcart Book of Poetry: The Best Poems from the First Thirty Years of the Pushcart Prize, as well as other major anthologies. His poems appear widely in journals that include The Kenyon Review, Southern Review, New American Writing and Virginia Quarterly Review.
Beasley’s appearance at Saint Martin’s University is sponsored by the English Department, the Saint Martin’s chapter of Sigma Tau Delta, the University’s Learning and Writing Center, and the O’Grady Library.
Saint Martin’s University is an independent four-year, coeducational university located on a wooded campus of more than 300 acres in Lacey, Washington. Established in 1895 by the Catholic Order of Saint Benedict, the University is one of 14 Benedictine colleges and universities in the United States and Canada, and the only one west of the Rocky Mountains. Saint Martin’s University prepares students for successful lives through its 23 majors and seven graduate programs spanning the liberal arts, business, education, nursing and engineering. Saint Martin’s welcomes more than 1,100 undergraduate students and 400 graduate students from many ethnic and religious backgrounds to its Lacey campus, and 300 more undergraduate students to its extension campuses located at Joint Base Lewis-McChord and Centralia College. Visit the Saint Martin’s University website at www.stmartin.edu.
