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Former University Professor named U.S. Poet Laureate

Charles Wright will serve as poet laureate for 2014-2015 term

<p>University professor emeritus Charles Wright began his term as U.S. Poet Laureate last Thursday.</p>

University professor emeritus Charles Wright began his term as U.S. Poet Laureate last Thursday.

University professor emeritus Charles Wright began his term as poet laureate for the United States Thursday.

Named poet laureate for the 2014-15 term June 12, Wright will have significant freedom to develop his own projects while working at the Library of Congress.

Wright opened his term — which coincides with the opening of Library of Congress’s annual literary term — with a reading of his work.

Wright has cumulatively written and published 24 collections of poems. His work has received significant critical acclaim, including a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Critics’ Circle award and the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize from the Poetry Foundation.

Wright was a professor in the University English department for 28 years. He joined the University creative writing faculty in 1983 and taught students until 2011.

Kevin McFadden, chief operating officer of the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, met Wright through a fellowship at the Henry Hoyns creative writing workshop.

“Charles is a good choice because his work is exemplary, and his thoughts on good writing are embedded in the work,” McFadden said.

Wright will follow Natasha Trethewey, who served as poet laureate beginning in 2012.

In a press release from the Library of Congress, Trethewey said she was “delighted by the appointment of Charles Wright, a poet whose work [she has] long admired.”

Wright’s love for poetry began while he was serving in the U.S. army in Italy. There, he discovered the poetry of Italian Poet Ezra Pound.

According to the Library of Congress, a poet laureate’s main job is to “raise the national consciousness to a greater appreciation of the reading and writing of poetry.”

“I think the position’s developed into needing a good representative, a resource for an ever-evolving art,” McFadden said. “Moving in new poets helps rotate the tastes and diverse vision for poetry. Nothing would be worse for poetry than one taste dominating it for decades.”

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