Athens, Ga. – Poet Robert Dana, whose still-active writing career spans more than fifty years and who has studied and worked with many of the 20th century’s literary giants, will read from his work at the University of Georgia on Thursday, April 7, at 4 p.m. in room 265 of Park Hall. This event, open to the public free of charge, is sponsored by the Georgia Poetry Circuit and The Georgia Review.
Rick Campbell, poet and longtime director of the Anhinga Press in Tallahassee, Fla., will open for Dana, whose most recent poetry volumes have been published by Anhinga: Morning of the Red Admirals (2004), Summer (2000), and Hello, Stranger (1996).
Dana’s 15 collections also include Yes, Everything (1994) and What I Think I Know: New and Selected Poems (1991), both from Another Chicago Press; Starting Out for the Difficult World (Harper and Row, 1987); In A Fugitive Season (Windhover Press, 1979) and Some Versions of Silence (W.W. Norton, 1967). He has also published A Community of Writers: Paul Engle and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop (1999) and Against the Grain: Interviews with Maverick American Publishers (1986).
Born in Boston and reared in New England, Dana served in the South Pacific during World War II and then earned degrees at Drake University and the fledging Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa. At Iowa, Dana studied under Robert Lowell and John Berryman, and his classmates included Philip Levine and W. D. Snodgrass. Dana then taught literature and creative writing at Cornell College for forty years, retiring a decade ago. During his time at Cornell, he restarted (in 1964) and edited the then-defunct North American Review, the country’s oldest extant periodical (established in 1815). Dana’s visiting teaching appointments have included the University of Florida, Wayne State University and the University of Stockholm in Sweden.
Dana’s work has earned for him numerous awards, including two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award and the poet laureateship of Iowa.
Campbell teaches at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University in Tallahassee in addition to overseeing Anhinga Press, which has been publishing poetry for more than thirty years. Campbell’s collections include The Traveler’s Companion (2004) and Setting the World in Order (2001).
