Linda Bierds, Poetic Interpreter of Science and History, to Read and Teach at Bryn Mawr

Award-winning poet Linda Bierds, who has been called "our premiere verbal portraitist of the space-time continuum," will give a public reading on Thursday, Feb. 15, at 7:30 p.m., in the Ely Room at the Wyndham Alumnae House.

Free and open to the public, Bierds' appearance is part of the College's yearlong Creative Writing Program Reading Series, which features poets, fiction and nonfiction writers and playwrights.

Her most recent volume, First Hand, explores historical moments of both scientific and artistic discovery, inhabiting the voices of James Watson, Marie Curie, Isaac Newton and Gianlorenzo Bernini. A guiding spirit of the collection is the early geneticist and Augustinian monk, who is invoked in a series of poems named after the liturgical hours and cast as prayers.

Bierds' many laurels include several Pushcart Prizes, two National Endowment for the Arts grants, a Guggenheim Fellowship and a "genius grant" from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, which characterized her as a poet "whose attention to historical detail and to narratives of lyric description sets her apart from the prevailing contemporary styles of confessional and linguistic poetry," adding that "her verse is clear, efficient, and elegant."

Her work is a perennial favorite of the nation's most influential poetry editors, appearing often in such publications as The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, The Kenyon Review, The Threepenny Review and numerous others. Some of her best-known collections of poetry include The Seconds; The Profile Makers; Flights of the Harvest-Mare; The Stillness, the Dancing; Heart and Perimeter and The Ghost Trio.

Bierds directs the creative writing program at the University of Washington. She is one of four poets in the Bryn Mawr Creative Reading Program Writing Series who, in addition to reading their work, will spend several weeks at Bryn Mawr as guest instructors in a master class in poetry.

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