Ohio Poet Laureate Dave Lucas to visit University of Findlay.
Ohio’s current poet laureate, Dave Lucas, insists that all of us already love poetry, even if we think we don’t.
“If you know by heart the lyrics to your favorite song, you already love one kind of poetry,” he writes. “You love another when you laugh at a joke or groan over a bad pun. The jargon of your profession and the slang you speak with friends are poetry.”
After he speaks, Lucas will sell and autograph some of his works. He also plans to visit a University of Findlay poetry class taught by Conor Bracken, assistant professor of English, who is helping to bring Lucas to the community via UF’s College of Liberal Arts and the UF Convocations Committee.
Lucas is a Cleveland, Ohio native who earned his Bachelor of Arts in English from John Carroll University, a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from the University of Virginia, and a Master of Arts and Ph.D. in English language and literature from the University of Michigan.
His work, “Weather,” was awarded the 2012 Ohioana Book Award in Poetry, and his poems are anthologized in The Bedford Introduction to Literature and Best New Poets of 2005, among other publications.
As the state’s poet laureate, Lucas is responsible for fostering the art of poetry, encouraging literacy and learning, addressing central issues relating to the humanities and heritage, and encouraging the reading and writing of poetry across Ohio.