And the Milliman Distinguished Writer-in-Residence
at the University of Washington in Seattle for the past decade.
She's been a visiting faculty member
at the MFA program at Warren Wilson
since that program began and has had
many other distinguished academic appointments.
In addition to her poetry, she has
published collections of translations
of the work of Jean Follain, and with her husband, Niko Boris
McHugh, poems by--
I don't know how to pronounce this, Heather--
Blaga Dimitrova and Paul Celan.
Bad, right?
Oh, OK.
Good.
For over 25 years, Heather McHugh
has entered the house of poetry through the door of language,
using puns and wordplay, word splices,
splits, reversals, and inversions to snap herself
and the reader awake.
Hers is a poetry of wit, wildness, and intelligence,
which went through a deepening transformation in the '80s when
she addressed the loss of a loved one to AIDS in her
stunning collection, Shades.
Since then her poetry has increasingly found its subject
in death, to the extent that in her new work,
she can make an occurrence as remote
as the death of Socrates affectingly personal and utterly
fresh.
Please welcome Heather McHugh.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you.