Renowned national poet Marvin Bell visited the studios of KRUU recently and was interviewed by Irving Toast, Poetry Ghost's own Rustin Larson. This interview will air Sunday, May 31st at 10:30 am and Monday June 1st at 1:30 pm central time. In this fascinating program, Marvin reads selected poems from his latest books, talks about his long career as a writer and teacher, and discusses recent world events in the light of his poetry.
Marvin Bell has been called "an insider who thinks like an outsider," and his writing has been called "ambitious without pretension." His nineteenth book, the wartime collection of poems Mars Being Red (2007), was named a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Awards. His twentieth book is a collaboration titled, 7 Poets, 4 Days, 1 Book, co-authored with the poets Istvan Laszlo Geher (Hungary), Ksenia Golubovich (Russia), Simone Inguanez (Malta), Christopher Merrill, Tomaz Salamun (Slovenia), and Dean Young, just published by Trinity University Press in 2009.
Mr. Bell taught forty years for the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where he held the position of Flannery O'Connor Professor of Letters, and served two terms as Iowa's first Poet Laureate. His literary honors include awards from the Academy of American Poets, the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Poetry Review. He reads and lectures widely and for five years designed and led an annual Urban Teachers Workshop for America SCORES. He and his wife, Dorothy, live in Iowa City and Port Townsend, Washington, and he serves on the faculty of the brief-residency MFA program based in Oregon at Pacific University. He often performs with the bassist Glen Moore of the jazz group Oregon and is the creator of a poetic form known as the "Dead Man" poem. His two sons are, among other things, "a professional, country music singer-songwriter with a strong sociopolitical bent, and a true ninja who helped guard the Dalai Lama in New York City."