Jan. 30, 2007 -- Donald Hall, Poet Laureate of the United States, will give a poetry reading at 4 p.m. on Feb. 2 in Old Cabell Hall Auditorium. The reading is free of charge and open to the public.

Hall, born in New Haven, Conn., in 1928, became the 14th U.S. Poet Laureate in June 2006. He has published 15 volumes of poetry and 20 books of prose and continues to write, with a book, “Eagle Pond,” forthcoming this year. He was married to Jane Kenyon, a poet herself, for 23 years. Hall and Kenyon moved to Eagle Pond Farm, Hall’s ancestral farm in New Hampshire, in 1975,
where they both pursued careers as poets. Eagle Pond Farm and the serenity of life and marriage there figured prominently in both Hall’s and Kenyon’s work.

After Kenyon died of cancer in 1995, Hall published two volumes of poetry, “Without” and “The Painted Bed,” and a book of prose, “The Best Day the Worst Day: Life with Jane Kenyon,” chronicling their life together, her illness and death, and his grief at her passing.

Hall has received numerous awards for poetry including the Marshall/Nation Award in 1987 for “The Happy Man”; the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Award in 1988 for “The One Day”; and the Lily Prize for Poetry in 1994. He is also the recipient of two Guggenheim Fellowships.

The poetry reading is sponsored by The Hedgehog Review, the Office of the President of the University of Virginia, Virginia Quarterly Review and the Center for Biomedical Ethics and Humanities.

For more information, contact Marilyn Roselius at marilyn@virginia.edu or call 924-
0998.