Campus Community
Posted: Thursday, March 19, 2009Rescheduled: Poet Anselm Berrigan to Speak at Buffalo State
By Mark Norris
Anselm Berrigan, author of multiple chapbooks, poetry collections, and a spoken-word CD, will present a reading at Buffalo State College on Friday, March 20, at 11:00 a.m. in the Campbell Student Union Assembly Hall. The event, which is free and open to the public, was rescheduled from February.
Berrigan is a poet and educator with a strong connection to the Western New York literary community. He received his bachelor of arts in English from the University at Buffalo in 1994. While at UB, he served as editor of the student newspaper, theSpectrum, and the paper’s entertainment supplement, the Prodigal Sun. Since graduating, Berrigan has made frequent return visits to Buffalo for reading engagements and has been a guest instructor at Just Buffalo Literary Center.
Berrigan’s personal history is steeped in poetics. He is the son of poets Alice Notley and the late Ted Berrigan, stepson of the late English poet and prose writer Douglas Oliver, brother of poet Edmund Berrigan, and husband of poet Karen Weiser.
Born in Chicago, Berrigan was raised in the East Village of New York City, where he lives now. He served as director for the famed Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church from 2003 to 2007. He has taught writing at Brooklyn College, Rutgers University, Pratt Institute, and Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. He is currently co-chair of the summer M.F.A. program in the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College and a visiting writer in the English Department at Wesleyan University. He holds a master of fine arts from Brooklyn College. His new book, Free Cell, will be published later this year by City Lights Books.
This event is sponsored by the Buffalo State English Department and Just Buffalo Literary Center, and is supported by the Auxiliary Services Grant Allocation Committee.
