AuThursday: Charles Wright, Poet Laureate of the United States

Charles Wright is the current Poet Laureate of the United States. He is often ranked as one of the best American poets of his generation. Born in 1935 in Pickwick Dam, Tennessee, Wright attended Davidson College and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop; he also served four years in the U.S. Army, and it was while stationed in Italy that Wright began to read and write poetry. He is the author of over 20 books of poetry.

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Read his poems Chickamauga and Nine-Panel Yaak River Screen online.

(From the Poetry Foundation)

Wright named new US Poet Laureate

On June 12th, 2014, Librarian of Congress James H. Billington announced the appointment of Charles Wright as the Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry. Charles Wright was born in Pickwick Dam, Tennessee on August 25, 1935. He is the author of 24 poetry collections, two books of essays, and three books of translation. His many honors include the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Bollingen Prize, the Ruth Lilly Prize from the Poetry Foundation, and the International Griffin Poetry Prize, as well as the 2008 Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize in Poetry from the Library of Congress.

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