August 17, 2018
Poet Mary Pinard to visit K-State
Mary Pinard, poet and professor of English at Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, will come to K-State for three days of student-centered activities Aug. 21-23 through a multi-unit collaboration under the Prairie Studies Initiative. Pinard has an abiding interest in and connection to the Flint Hills, where she has served several poet-in-residencies, most recently at The Volland Store in Wabaunsee County.
She will lead the Design Day activities in the landscape architecture and regional & community planning department on Tuesday, Aug. 21, which will combine writing ekphrastic poetry with sketching and drawing on the campus; and conduct a public reading from 5:30-6:30 p.m. Aug. 22 in the Ekdahl Room in Seaton-Regnier Hall. She also will conduct a poetry workshop with Professor Traci Brimhall's students on Wednesday morning, Aug. 23.
Pinard's career teaching students who come to her classes with little exposure to poetry and her experiences using poetry's forms and potency to increase their creativity and expression make her an inspiring guest for APDesign, the English department, and the landscape architecture and regional & community planning department.
Her poems have appeared in a variety of literary journals — including The Iowa Review, Harvard Review, Prairie Schooner, and The Georgia Review — and she has been the recipient of several national awards for her poetry. "Portal," her collection of poems, was published in 2014 by Salmon Press, Ireland. Her essays on poetics and poets, including Alice Oswald and Lorine Niedecker, have been published in critical anthologies and scholarly journals.
Pinard earned a bachelor's degree in English and theatre from Saint Mary's College, Notre Dame, Indiana, a master's degree in English from the University of Chicago, and a Master of Fine Arts in poetry from Vermont College.
More information about her poetry, public readings and publications can be found online.