DURHAM, N.H. - Donald Hall, former Poet Laureate and winner of the Frost Medal, will give a short poetry reading from his latest volume, "The Back Chamber," Monday, Oct. 10, 2011, at the University of New Hampshire.

The reading, which begins at 4 p.m. in the Dunleavy Reading Room of the Milne Special Collections at the UNH Dimond Library, will be followed by an informal reception and opportunity for attendees to purchase books for signing.

In "The Back Chamber," Hall illuminates the evocative, iconic objects of deep memory — "a cowbell," "a white stone perfectly round," "a three-legged milking stool" — that serve as a foreground to the rich meditations on time and mortality that run through his remarkable new collection.

While Hall's devoted readers will recognize many of his long-standing preoccupations — baseball, the family farm, love, sex, and friendship — what will strike them as new is the fierce, pitiless poignancy he reveals as his own life's end comes into view. "The Back Chamber" is far from being death-haunted but rather is lively, irreverent, sexy, hilarious, ironic, and sly — full of the life-affirming energy that has made Hall one of America's most popular and enduring poets.

Poet laureate of the United States from 2006 to 2007, Hall has received the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in poetry, the Lenore Marshall Award, the 1990 Frost Medal from the Poetry Society of America, and the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

The reading and reception are sponsored by the Dimond Library and UNH Center for the Humanities. The event is free and open to the public.

For more information, contact Bill Ross, head of Milne Special collections at the UNH Dimond Library, at 603-862-0346 and bill.ross@unh.edu.

The University of New Hampshire, founded in 1866, is a world-class public research university with the feel of a New England liberal arts college. A land, sea, and space-grant university, UNH is the state's flagship public institution, enrolling 12,200 undergraduate and 2,300 graduate students.

VIDEO
A visit with Donald Hall, former Poet Laureate and author of "The Back Chamber." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIyzEcvs_90

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