Highly lauded poet, Boston native, UNC-Chapel Hill Professor Alan Shapiro reads from his latest book at Murray State this Thursday (April 3) in the Clara M. Eagle Gallery. Shapiro has won numerous awards for his work including two from the National Arts Foundation. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a fellow of the Guggenheim Foundation. On Sounds Good, Shapiro reads from his work and talks about how he became a poet after his high school basketball career ended.
"A poem sort of tries out different metaphors, and when it hits the one that it's looking for, it just sort of tries to inhabit it."
Last June, Shapiro was among seven finalists - four international and three Canadian - who were invited to read in Toronto by The Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry. Each finalist received $10,000 from the Trust. In 2009, Shapiro's collection of poems "Old War" won the Ambassador Book Award. He is a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist and winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the William R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
