Poet Donald Hall Is This Spring’s Distinguished Visiting Writer

Donald Hall, author of 13 volumes of poetry and a three-time National Book Award nominee, will visit the College April 16–20 as the Department of Writing’s distinguished visiting writer. In addition to conducting five master classes in poetry writing, Hall will make two free public presentations.

On Tuesday, April 17, he will give a lecture, "Words for the Tongue: The Orality of Poetry," at 7:30 p.m. in Williams 225. He will read his poems on Thursday, April 19, at 7:30 p.m. in Muller Chapel.

Hall spent almost 20 years on the English faculty at the University of Michigan before moving back to his native New England in 1975 to write full-time. The influence of place is a significant theme in his poetry, and his work speaks movingly of the power of family, memory, and history.

Hall’s 1988 book of poetry, The One Day, was published on his 60th birthday and won the National Book Critics Circle Award for poetry, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in poetry, and a Pulitzer Prize nomination. The One Day is an ambitious work in which Hall speaks in several narrative voices about midlife crisis. The Los Angeles Times Book Review claimed that "Hall has long kept his eye and ear upon what is old, what is historical, what seems behind us yet is still living with us."

Hall has also written plays, works of autobiography, and children’s books. He contributes short stories and articles to numerous periodicals, including the New Yorker, Esquire, Atlantic, Playboy, and Transatlantic Review.

For more information contact associate professor of writing Katharyn Howd Machan at 274-3325.