NEW VINEYARD – On Monday, August 10 at 6:30 p.m. at the New Vineyard Public Library, Wesley McNair, the Poet Laureate of Maine, will combine commentary with a reading of poems to tell the story of how he became a poet, from past to present.
“People might be surprised that I didn’t have a literary background at all,” McNair said. “I started out in poverty and a broken home, and there were many detours along my way to becoming a poet.”
McNair’s poetry, based on the humor and sorrow of ordinary life as we all know it, is likely to inspire both laughter and tears.
Wesley McNair is the Poet Laureate of Maine. Poet Philip Levine has called him “one of the great storytellers of contemporary poetry.” He has won grants from the Fulbright and Guggenheim foundations, two Rockefeller Fellowships, two NEA grants in creative writing, and an Emmy Award. He has twice been invited to read his poetry by the Library of Congress. He was recently selected for a United States Artists Fellowship as one of America’s “finest living artists,” and in April of this year was named as the recipient of the PEN New England Award for Poetry for his latest collection, The Lost Child: Ozark Poems.
Books will be available at McNair’s reading for signing and purchase.
