Kansas poet laureate visits PSU

  Monday, March 31, 2014 2:00 AM
  News

Pittsburg, KS

Wyatt Townley, the poet laureate of Kansas, will read from her works at 8 p.m. on Thursday, April 3, in the Governors Room of the Overman Student Center at Pittsburg State University. Townley’s visit is part of the English Department’s ongoing Distinguished Visiting Writers Series.

Townley’s work has been nominated for The Pushcart Prize, read by Garrison Keillor on NPR, featured by Ted Kooser in his American Life in Poetry column, and appeared in hundreds of venues ranging from The Paris Review to Newsweek.

Her books of poems inclued “The Breathing Field,” “Perfectly Normal,” and her newest collection, “The Afterlives of Trees,” a Kansas Notable Book and winner of the Nelson Poetry Book Award.

Wyatt said her mission as Kansas poet laureate is twofold: to bring people home to poetry and poetry home to people.

Formerly a dancer, Wyatt has taught yoga for more 30 years and is the founder of Yoganetics®, a therapeutic system practiced in 10 countries. For years a dance critic for Dance Magazine and The Kansas City Star, Wyatt was commissioned to write the commemorative history, “Kansas City Ballet: The First Fifty Years.”