Poet Elizabeth Willis To Give Reading September 10

Acclaimed poet and scholar Elizabeth Willis will present a poetry reading at the Fairmont State University and Pierpont Community & Technical College main campus at 4 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 10, in the David Brooks Gallery of Wallman Hall.

A book signing and reception will follow. The event is made possible by an RSeed grant and in cooperation with the "Lifting Belly High: Women's Poetry Since 1900" conference in Pittsburgh on Sept. 11-13.

Elizabeth Willis' most recent book, "Meteoric Flowers," was published by Wesleyan University Press in 2006. Other works include "Turneresque" (Burning Deck, 2003); "The Human Abstract" (Penguin, 1995); and a book-length poem entitled "Second Law" (Avenue B, 1993).

Her honors and awards include selection for the National Poetry Series, a Walter N. Thayer Fellowship for the Arts, a grant from the California Arts Council, a fellowship from the Howard Foundation and a residency at the MacDowell Colony. She has held teaching residencies at University of Denver, Brown University, and Naropa University.

Beyond her dissertation on Pre-Raphaelite aesthetics (SUNY Buffalo, 1994), Willis has written on 19th- and 20th-century poetry, focusing on the intersections of public and private life, the effects of political and technological developments on poetic production and the relation of contemporary poets to their sources. Recent prose can be found in "Textual Practice, Contemporary Literature and XCP: Cross-cultural Poetics." Currently she is editing a collection of essays entitled "Radical Vernacular: Lorine Niedecker and the Politics of Place."

Willis was born in Bahrain and lived for many years in Wisconsin before moving to western New York. She taught at various venues in New York, Rhode Island and California before becoming Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at Mills College from 1997 to 2002. Since 2002, she has taught creative writing and literature at Wesleyan University.