Pulitzer Prize winner to perform at Manifest

The cycle of life, the effect of war and humanitarianism are just a few of the topics to be featured at this year’s poetry reading during Manifest. Maxine Kumin, a poet who got her start in the 1960s and who was somewhat associated with the feminist movement in the 1970s, was chosen by the poetry program at Columbia to perform a reading of her most recent works.

“She’s a humanistic poet. She writes about her personal experience about being a woman, mother, a grandmother,” said David Trinidad, director of the graduate poetry program.

Kumin is a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet. And while her works have garnered her acclaim and awards, she prefers to remain out of the spotlight. Kumin lives on a 200-acre horse farm in New Hampshire, and her down-to-earth lifestyle is apparent in much of her work.

“She brings a deeper appreciation and insight of what it means to be human and a responsible resident of the Earth,” Trinidad said. “Students can look forward to responding to her poems chronicling her life and experiences.”

Kumin was chosen to perform at this year’s Manifest by the Poetry Committee, which chooses all of the events for the poetry program, according to Trinidad.

Among her influences, Kumin credits John Holmes Jr., who she studied under at the Boston Center for Adult Education and fellow classmate and poet Anne Sexton. Her body of work includes 1973’s Up Country, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, The Long Marriage: Poems, In Deep: Country Essays, Selected Poems 1960-1990 and Always Beginning: Essays on Life in Poetry. She has won numerous awards including the Aiken Taylor Award for Modern Poetry, Levingson Prize, Eunice Tietjens Memorial Prize from Poetry.

Trinidad said he believes that the impact of Kumin’s poetry won’t be lost on the students who attend the reading. He notes her experience as a poet of more than 40 years as one of the enriching qualities of her work.
“She’s lived the life of a poet. For a true poet, the longer you live and the more you publish, the more your voice asserts [itself],” he said.

Maxine Kumin will read selections from her newest works on May 27 at the Ferguson Theater in the Alexandroff Campus Center, 600 S. Michigan Ave., from 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m.