Jan. 19, 1998
	                                        Contact:  Lisa Russ Spaar
                                                         (804) 924-6675     
							

         POET MICHAEL S. HARPER, U.VA.'S REA VISITING WRITER,
         TO SPEAK AT THE UNIVERSITY BOOKSTORE

	Poet Michael S. Harper, professor of English at Brown
University, will be at the University of Virginia the first week of
February as the Rea Visiting Writer, speaking on the craft of poetry
Feb. 3 and reading from his work Feb. 5. Both events will take place
at 8 p.m. in the University Bookstore and are open to the public.
	The first poet laureate of Rhode Island (1988-1993), Harper
has published 10 books of poetry, two of which were nominated for the
National Book Award: "Dear John, Dear Coltrane" and "Images of Kin,
New and Selected Poems." The latter won the 1978 Melville Cane Award
from the Poetry Society of America, and another work, "History Is Your
Own Heartbeat," won the Black Academy of Arts and Letters Award for
poetry. 
	Harper is co-editor of "Chant of Saints," an anthology of
African-American Art, Writing and Scholarship, and in 1990 he received
the Robert Hayden Poetry Award from the United Negro College Fund. His
most recent honors include election to the American Academy of Arts
and Sciences in 1995, winning the George Kent Poetry Award in 1996 for
"Honorable Amendments," and receiving the Claiborne Pell Award for
Excellence in the Arts in 1997.
	Born in Brooklyn in 1938, Harper says his writing voice
evolved from travels made in the late 1960s to Mexico and Europe.
"Those landscapes broadened my scope and interest in poetry and
culture of other countries. ... [They] made me look closely at the
wealth of human materials in my own life, its ethnic richness,
complexity of language and stylization, the tension between stated
moral idealism and brutal historical realities, and I investigated the
inner reality of those struggles to find the lyrical expression of
their secrets in my own voice."
	Harper's interest in history pervades his poetry. He uses
stories from his family's past and events in history, as well as key
present-day and historical figures, to illustrate his points: Harper's
grandfather facing a mob threatening to burn his home; baseball player
Jackie Robinson; novelist Richard Wright; jazz musician John Coltrane;
Puritan dissident and founder of Rhode Island Roger Williams; and the
farmer-turned-abolitionist John Brown. They are "kin who share the goal
of artistic excellence in whatever may be their craft or endeavor," says
literary critic Robert B. Stepto.
	"While Harper invokes blood relations in several works, his
approach to kinship is a radiant one," writes Michael G. Cooke.
Reaching out across time, space and race, Harper is "neither a black
poet nor a white poet. He uses both traditions and heritages
rightfully his and America's to create images of power and beauty,"
says poetry critic Norris B. Clark.
	The Rea Visiting Writer program in U.Va.'s English department
is sponsored each semester by the Dungannon Foundation and the Henry
Hoyns Fund. During their visits, Rea visiting writers work with
students in the department's Creative Writing Program.
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