Poet Laureate of Kansas Coming To Liberal Memorial Library

Wyatt Townley, Poet Laureate of Kansas, will be bringing the
conversation of “Coming Home to Poetry” to the Liberal Memorial Library
on Wednesday, March 4 at noon.

The event is free and open to the public.

Townley, a widely-published, nationally-known poet and a
fourth-generation Kansan, will explore what home is, what poetry is, and
how they intersect — reading both her work and that of other poets.

Her work has been featured on National Public Radio’s “The Writer’s
Almanac” with Garrison Keillor, in US Poet Laureate Emeritus Ted
Kooser’s “American Life in Poetry” column, and published in journals
ranging from “The Paris Review” to “Newsweek.”

She has published three collections of poetry: “The Breathing Field”
(Little Brown), “Perfectly Normal” (The Smith), and “The Afterlives of
Trees” (Woodley Press), a Kansas Notable Book and winner of the Nelson
Poetry Book Award.

A founding board member of The Writers Place in Kansas City, MO, Townley
has served as a teaching artist with Young Audiences and Writers in the
Schools program, and has appeared at writers’ conferences and literary
festivals in the Midwest and Northeast.

“The notion of ‘home’ is a long-held Kansas value, and I’d like to start
a conversation around the state about coming home to poetry,” said
Townley. “Poetry is a place we can return to in all kinds of weather,
with its innate power to heal and comfort, transform and inspire. Its
porch light is always on.”

The Poet Laureate of Kansas is a program made possible by the Kansas
Humanities Council.

For more information, contact the Liberal Memorial Library at 626-0180.