, one of America’s most celebrated poets, will give the 2018 on April 12. Simic will be the 54^th poet to appear in the series since its inception in 1964.

As a Roethke reader, Simic continues a 91̽»¨ that includes such renowned poets as , , , and the UW’s own faculty member and alumnus .

The annual honors the acclaimed poet who from 1947 to 1963 was a professor in the 91̽»¨English Department. taught a generation of post-war poets, including Wagoner, Hugo, and .

Simic, a poet and essayist, was born in Yugoslavia in 1938, immigrated to the United States in 1954 and published his first poem at 21 in 1959. Since 1967 he has published 20 books of his own poetry, including “” (2013) and “” (2015). He has also published seven books of essays, a memoir and many volumes of translations of Serbian, Croatian and Slovenian poetry.

He is the recipient of many prizes and awards, most notably the for his collection “,” and was a finalist for the prize in 1986 and 1987. He has also received the Griffin Prize, a MacArthur Fellowship and the Wallace Stevens Award, all prestigious honors for poets. He served in 2007-2008 as the Poet Laureate of the United States. He is a at the University of New Hampshire, where he has taught since 1973.

“Simic is often described as a surrealist, and to the extent surrealism depends on phantasmagoria, the shoe may fit,” in 2003.

“But if so, he’s a surrealist with a purpose: The disconcerting shifts and sinister imagery that characterize his work are always intended to suggest — however obliquely — the existential questions that trouble our day-to-day lives.”

The 2018 Roethke Memorial Poetry Reading will be at 7 p.m. Thursday, April 12, in room 120 of Kane Hall, with a reception to follow. The reading is free and open to the public.

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For more information, contact Karla Tofte of the English Department at ktofte@uw.edu.

Poet and author will give the 53rd annual Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Reading at 8 p.m. Friday, May 27, in Room 130 of Kane Hall, also known as the Roethke Auditorium. The event is free and the public is invited.

Fulton is the author of nine books, including “” (2015), her most recent poetry collection; as well as the work of connected stories “” (2009); “” (2005) and “” (2002), which received the Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry from the Library of Congress.

Her poetry and fiction have appeared in Best of the Best American Poetry, The Best American Short Stories and The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry. She is the

Fulton is the recipient of an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature as well as fellowships from the MacArthur Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, among many other awards and honors.

Of “Barely Composed,” a reviewer for The Boston Globe wrote, “Alice Fulton … can make you see the space between the stars … (her) poems give us access to those spaces between and beyond words, a wilderness where meaning awaits capture.”

Asked by New Yorker writer Alice Baumgartner in 2010 how she defines poetry and what distinguishes it from prose, Fulton said, “Poetry emphasizes music, rhythm, reticence, multiplicity. These qualities, present in prose to varying degrees, are intensified in poetry, framed and underscored by the poetic line.”

She added later, “Maybe prose is like walking while poetry is like dancing. We walk to get somewhere, always moving forward. But we dance just to dance, and the movement sometimes goes backwards or downwards.”

The series is presented by the 91̽»¨ , for whom the lecture series is named, taught at the 91̽»¨Â from 1947 until his death in 1963, and was recipient of both the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the National Book Award.

Learn more about the reading and read lists of past presenters at its .

is a senior lecturer with the 91̽»¨ and a writer in residence with the . She worked with well-known photographer to create a book featuring portraits of Northwest artists, writers and arts advocates. “” was published in September by . McCue answered a few questions about the work.

Q: How did this book come about?

A: Mary and I worked together on “,” my book about the poet Richard Hugo and the Northwest Towns that he wrote about. That collaboration came from a glint in the eye of Pat Soden, then the director of 91̽»¨Press.

Pat said: “I want you to work with Mary Randlett. You two would get a kick out of each other.” Pat is a great artistic matchmaker. I loved working with Mary. The more I got to know her, the more I saw that the scope of her work was phenomenal. Then, Rachael Levay, the wonderful publicist at 91̽»¨Press, suggested that I do this portraits book.

Mary likes working so it was easy to convince her. Sometimes, I’ve said that the whole project was an excuse to hang out with Mary. And, hang out we did — for two years in and in her garage, rifling through prints. We had a lot of half-finished sandwiches laying around.

Q: Several featured in this book are or were members of the 91̽»¨community, including , , , , , , , and others. How did you decide who to include?

A: We had these criteria: 1) we wanted to focus on artists, writers and advocates of the arts; 2) we wanted the photographs to be compelling, exposing some essence of their subjects and 3) we wanted to include people whom Mary had loved and worked with or who provided a window into the range of work being done in this region.

Q: You wrote an essay to accompany each of the subjects of the book. Would you tell a bit about your research process? 

A: I spent a lot of time reading whatever articles, books, blogs and essays I could find about the people whom we chose. Then, I dug into the rich world of Special Collections — a place where Gary Lundell, reference specialist, and Nicolette Bromberg, visual materials curator, really helped me find some fantastic prints of Mary’s and letters to and from some of the people in the book.

Special Collections is a treasure trove; it’s a great hangout and the people who work there are immersed in the history of our region. Gary, for example, was a friend of ‘s and of ‘s — two artists whom I wrote about.

Then, there were the drives with Mary herself. To get her talking, you really have to be driving. She loosens up and tells great stories when she is on the road. So, I hung a tape recorder from the heating vent in the dashboard, and off we went. I love the material from those interviews and Mary’s quotes appear throughout the book.

Checking the facts, confirming memories — all of that happened with as many of the folks as I could reach and with a great assistant on the project, Shannon Foss. Shannon is an undergraduate in the Honors Program and a genius at collecting citations.

The last part, and one of the most important, involved my own speculations about the compositions of the photographs themselves. I looked and wrote and devised reactions and theories about the portraits as art.

And, I got some terrific help by asking Barbara Johns, the fabulous art historian, and Sheila Farr, one of our region’s great art critics, to peruse my work. As Richard Hugo once said, “A good teacher can save you 10 years.” Barbara and Sheila certainly saved me from years of flailing and I’ll be forever grateful to them.

• “Mary Randlett Portraits” also features an afterword by Nicolette Bromberg.