U.S. Poet Laureate to Visit Rose State College in March

Kay Ryan (that's Ryan on the right), United States Poet Laureate, will be the guest poet March 5 at Rose State College’s annual “Poetry at Rose” event, 7 p.m. in the H.B Atkinson Theatre on campus.

Ryan’s reading is to be followed by a reception and book signing.

Ryan said her visit is part of her efforts as poet laureate to promote community colleges nationwide. In a recent interview in Inside Higher Ed., Ryan said that she is a product of community colleges herself, both as a graduate and as a long-time instructor.
“…At community college, all of my instructors knew my name; I had a personal relationship with them, which is beyond price,” Ryan told Inside. "I’m doing the project…just by shouting from the rooftops, 'I spent my life teaching community college, I graduated from one, and I think they’re great!' "
“A poet of Ryan’s stature visiting our campus is an honor,” said Rose State President Dr. Terry Britton. “To have the country’s poet laureate here will heighten awareness of the importance of poetry.”

Ryan's awards include the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, a Guggenheim fellowship, an Ingram Merrill Award, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Union League Poetry Prize, the Maurice English Poetry Award, and four Pushcart Prizes. Her work has been selected four times for The Best American Poetry and was included in The Best of the Best American Poetry 1988-1997.

Ryan's poems and essays appear in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Poetry, The Yale Review, Paris Review, The American Scholar, The Threepenny Review, Parnassus, among other journals and anthologies. Ryan was elected a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets in 2006. In 2008, Ryan was appointed the Library of Congress's sixteenth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry. Since 1971, she has lived in Marin County, California.

Admission to the event is free, but seating is limited and reservations are requested. For more information or to reserve seats, contact Dianne Krob, 405-736-0323, or email dkrob@rose.edu.

Funding for this program is provided in part by a grant from the Oklahoma Humanities Council (OHC), the Oklahoma Arts Council (OAC), and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).