Vermont Poet to Present Reading on Campus March 6

Poet Spring Ulmer, whose first book of poems, “Benjamin’s Spectacles,” won the Kore Press First Book Award, will present a free reading on campus at 7 p.m. Thursday, March 6, in the University Galleries at Illinois State University.

The galleries are located at the south end of the Center for the Visual Arts, which is located at the south end of campus on Beaufort Street.  The event is sponsored by the Department of English and the Women & Gender Studies unit.

Ulmer grew up in Vermont and attended The Cooper Union School of Art. She holds a master of fine arts degree in poetry from the University of Arizona.  Ulmer has worked as a photojournalist and reporter in eastern Kentucky.  Her honors include grants from the Kentucky Foundation for Women, the Kentucky Arts Council and the Andrea Frank Foundation.  In 1998, she was an artist-in-residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts.

Ulmer recently returned from Rwanda, where she helped build a school for orphans of the 1994 genocide.  Today she lives in Iowa City.  Her manuscript, “Benjamin's Spectacles,” was chosen by Sonia Sanchez for the Kore Press First Book Award 2007.