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Noted Birmingham poet Robert Collins will sign and discuss his latest book, NAMING THE DEAD.
In Naming the Dead, Robert Collins takes the reader into "the blind
world here below," a world inhabited by sinners, saints, and strangers,
who often are one and the same. From childhood playgrounds through the
suffering of adulthood, the heart of the collection is made of eight
elegies literally naming the dead and paying homage to some who have
served as mentors and companions on the journey. We learn, then, that
the only way to return home is to keep moving forward. Thus, the poet
offers hope, however tentative, that those who enter the abyss might
like Dante "ascend into the shining world again.
Born in New Jersey, Robert Collins was educated in Ohio, where he
received his A.B. from Xavier University and M.A. and Ph.D. from Ohio
State University. While at OSU he received two Academy of American Poets
prizes. He has published poems in a variety of 1iterary magazines,
including Ascent, Charlotte Poetry Review, Chattahoochee Review,
Cimarron Review, Connecticut Review, College English, Green Hills
Literary Lantern, Hiram Poetry Review, Louisville Review, Manhattan
Review, Poems & Plays, Prairie Schooner, South Coast Poetry Journal,
Southern Humanities Review, Shenandoah, Southern Poetry Review, and Tar
River Poetry. He has received two Individual Artists Fellowships from
the Alabama State Council on the Arts, been nominated for a Pushcart
Prize several times, and received the Ascent Award for Poetry, selected
by Brendan Galvin. He taught American literature and creative writing at
the University of Alabama in Birmingham where he founded and edited
Birmingham Poetry Review and directed the creative writing program.
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