Surowiecki Reads as Part of Writers-on-the-Shore

SALISBURY, MD---White Pine Press Poetry Prize winner John Surowiecki reads from his works during the second installment of Salisbury University’s Writers-on-the-Shore series 8 p.m. Thursday, October 23, in the Worcester Room of the Commons.

White Pine Press judge C.D. Wright, a professor of English at Brown University, author of 10 volumes of poetry and a recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and National Endowment for the Arts, praised Surowiecki’s work for grappling with the “sweet sting of living,” in which the poet “endows our thousand and one indiscretions with a human face and the words to admit them.”

A native of Meriden, CT, Surowiecki has published several chapbooks. His first full-sized poetry volume, Watching Cartoons Before Attending a Funeral, was published this year. The book features poetry anchored in the everyday world. In the title poem, for instance, the act of dressing for a funeral is mirrored in a Popeye cartoon that happens to be on television at the time. In the poem, Olive Oyl asks Popeye to fasten her pearls and “explain once again how death is our taproot and our wings.”

His work has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Rosebud, the Briar Cliff Review, the Prairie Schooner, 2001: A Science Fiction Poetry Anthology and the 2002 Emily Dickinson Awards in Poetry Anthology.

An alumnus of the University of Connecticut, he won the school’s Wallace Stevens Award twice. He has also earned awards from the Georgia State University Review, Common Ground Review, Portland Pen, Kimera, The Mississippi Review and Two Rivers Review.

Sponsored by the SU English Department and Cultural Affairs Council, the reading is free and the public is cordially invited.

For more information call 410-543-6030 or visit the SU Web site at www.salisbury.edu.