Successor To Brooks, Sandburg
“A decade ago this month, Kevin Stein was chosen for a daunting task: following two Pulitzer Prize winners, Gwendolyn Brooks and Carl Sandburg, as the poet laureate of Illinois,” Caryn Rousseau reports for AP.
“Ten years later the Bradley University professor has put his own signature on a position that is unpaid but considered crucial to widening appreciation for the art form. He has created a state poetry website and donates money out of his own pocket to buy poetry books for libraries across the state.”
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“Stein, 59, is Illinois’ fourth poet laureate. Howard Austin, a teacher and banker from a family farm near Blue Mound, took the position in 1936 and held it until he died in 1962. Sandburg held the post from 1962 until his death in 1967. Brooks served for 32 years, from 1968 until she died in 2000.
“Illinois went without a poet laureate until December 2003, when then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich named Stein to the post. Today the unfunded post has a four-year term, and Stein is in the middle of his third term.”
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Shouldn’t there be term limits? Like, one per poet?
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Bradley University Illinois Poet Laureate Site.
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“Kevin Stein is Illinois’ Poet Laureate. Stein came to Bradley in 1984 from Indiana University, where he received the Ph.D. in American literature and the M. A. in Creative Writing. He currently serves as Caterpillar Professor of English at Bradley University.”
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Poetry’s Afterlife: Verse In The Digital Age.
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On Being A Nielsen Family.
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Comments welcome.
Posted on December 26, 2013