University at Buffalo - The State University of New York

Published: October 25, 2007

By SUE WUETCHER
Reporter Editor

Poet, environmentalist and one-time UB faculty member Robert Hass will deliver the annual Oscar Silverman Poetry Reading at 8 p.m. Nov. 9 in Baird Recital Hall, 250 Baird Hall, North Campus.

The reading will be free and open to the public. The Silverman reading is held in memory of Oscar Silverman, distinguished UB scholar and teacher who chaired the Department of English and directed the University Libraries. He also helped to develop UB's extensive collection of 20th century poetry.

U.S. poet laureate from 1995-97, Hass was an assistant professor in the UB Department of English from 1967-71 when he left to join the faculty at the University of California-Berkeley. He remains on the faculty at Berkeley as a full professor in the English department. He also serves on the board of chancellors of the Academy of American Poets.

Hass has published numerous books of poetry, including "Field Guide," "Praise," "Human Wishes" and "Sun Under Wood: New Poems," as well as a book of essays on poetry, "Twentieth Century Pleasures: Prose on Poetry." Hass translated many of the works of Nobel Prize-winning Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz, and edited "The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson and Issa," and "Poet's Choice: Poems for Everyday Life."

Hass' deep commitment to environmental issues prompted him to found River of Words (ROW), an organization that promotes environmental and arts education in affiliation with the Library of Congress Center for the Book. He is chairman of ROW's board of directors, and judges the organization's annual international environmental poetry and art contest for youth. He is also a board member of International Rivers Network.

Hass was chosen as Educator of the Year by the North American Association on Environmental Education and in 2005 was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His most recent books are "Now & Then," a collection of his Washington Post articles (Shoemaker & Hoard, April 2007) and a collection of poems entitled "Time and Materials" (Ecco/HarperCollins, fall 2007).

He has been awarded the MacArthur "genius" fellowship from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and received National Book Critics' Circle Awards in 1984 and 1997.