Oct 20, 2014

Verse Like Water: Poet Robert Hass

Verse Like Water: the visiting poet program of Central Lakes College, in collaboration with The Crossing Arts Alliance, invites you to this literary event featuring former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Hass. The Brainerd campus is hosting this great American poet, translator, teacher, and prodigious advocate for world peace. The reading is at noon on October 29, and will be followed by a book signing and craft talk at 1:30 pm. Special thanks to Minneapolis poet, musician, and songwriter Brian Laidlaw who will perform at 11:00 am in the Chalberg Theater. 


After successfully hosting Charles Simic and Billy Collins this past spring, Verse Like Water: the visiting poet program of Central Lakes College moves towards two exciting literary events this fall, and the first of these is the American poet Robert Hass.

Robert Hass is an iconic figure in our country, and he has won all the important awards available to a writer including a National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and most recently the Wallace Stevens Award. He was Poet Laureate of the United States from 1995 to 1997, and he has for many years been a top professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

Looming above his acclaim is the shelf full of books he has written for all of us. In addition to his own astonishing collections of poetry and criticism, Hass has written definitive translations of the Nobel Laureate Cszlaw Milosz, as well as the Japanese Haiku masters Basho and Issa.

In addition to writing and lecturing extensively in defense of our environment, Hass is a spirited, prodigious advocate for peace. His activism remains famous, and he reads verse in unlikely places from congressional offices to military bases. 

Verse Like Water is generously funded by The Minnesota State Arts Board, and all events are free and open to the public.​