Michael Sutherland, web services librarian, 308-865-8544
B. H. Fairchild, a nationally acclaimed poet and former Kearney State College instructor, will return to Kearney for a poetry reading on April 11 at the Museum of Nebraska Art.
The event is presented by the Calvin T. Ryan Library and Kearney Public Library, among others. The reading will begin at 7:30 p.m. and a book signing with wine and other refreshments will follow. The event is open to the public.
Much of his work is representative of his “Great Plains” heritage. “I don’t insist upon beauty being found in strange, overlooked places,” he said. “That’s just the way it seems to emerge in many of my poems.”
Fairchild has been awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Pushcart Prize in Poetry, the Beatrice Hawley Award, the California Book Award, and several others. His work was also a finalist for the National Book Award, and has received fellowships from the National Endowment from the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. His books of poetry include “The Arrival of the Future,” “The Art of the Lathe,” “Early Occult Memory Systems of the lower Midwest,” “Local Knowledge,” and “Usher: Poems.” He also has written a critical study of the poetry of William Blake, “Such Holy Song: Music as Idea, Form, and Image in the Poetry of William Blake.”
Other sponsors of the event are the Reynolds Reading Series, Faculty Senate Artists and Lectures Grant, the UNK English department and the UNK Foundation.
