Poet Campion to Present Reading at Washington College, January 30

Chestertown, MD, January 19, 2007 — He has been hailed as a poet with an "extraordinary ear and imagination," one who "was born to make music out of consonants and vowels." He is Peter Campion, a rising talent on the American poetry scene, and he will present a reading from his works at Washington College on Tuesday, January 30, at 4:30 p.m. The reading will be in the Sophie Kerr Room at Miller Library.

Campion, an assistant professor of English at Washington College, has held a George Starbuck Lectureship at Boston University, as well as a Wallace Stegner Fellowship and Jones Lecturership at Stanford University. His poetry and prose have appeared recently in Agenda, ArtNews, the Boston Globe, Modern Painters, Parnassus, Poetry, the San Francisco Chronicle, Slate, Sculpture, The Yale Review and elsewhere.

Other People, Campion's debut collection of verse, was published by the University of Chicago Press.

Prolific poet/critic Robert Pinsky enthused, "Like a young athlete who has learned to apply extravagant gifts beyond mere virtuosity, Peter Campion brings his extraordinary ear and imagination to large subjects. Born to make music out of consonants and vowels, he can sustain that music through a range from ecstatic outcry to whispered conversation. ... This is a thrilling first book."

The reading is sponsored by the Sophie Kerr Committee, which works to carry on the legacy of the late Sophie Kerr, a writer from Denton, Md., whose generosity has done so much to enrich Washington College's literary culture. When she died in 1965, Kerr left the bulk of her estate to the College, specifying that one half of the income from her bequest be awarded every year to the senior showing the most "ability and promise for future fulfillment in the field of literary endeavor" and the other half be used to bring visiting writers to campus, to fund scholarships, and to help defray the costs of student publications.

Admission to Campion's Tuesday poetry reading is free and open to the public. For more information, call 410-778-2800.