NEWPORT —On April 19 at 7 p.m., the Richards Library in Newport, NH, will host Wesley McNair for a reading from his new book of poetry,The Unfastening. The reading will be held in the Library Arts Center.
The Unfasteningis McNair’s 11th volume of poetry. It explores the difficult question of how we find our way back to the world after a dark time of grief and despair. The poems of the collection cover a wide range of themes, from sorrow to hope and joy.
A current resident of Maine, McNair was born in Newport and grew up in Claremont where he graduated from Stevens High School. Later, he lived in North Sutton, writing his first poems there. “It was in New Hampshire that I became a poet,” he says.
The recipient of Guggenheim, Rockefeller and NEA fellowships, McNair has also won the Theodore Roethke Prize, the PEN New England Award, a United States Artists Fellowship as one of America’s “finest living artists,” and the Richards Library’s Sarah Josepha Hale Medal. He has twice been invited to read his poetry by the Library of Congress.
In addition to his reading, McNair will discuss the personal experiences that led toThe Unfasteningand the challenges of writing the collection. The event will be followed by a question and answer session and a book signing.
For more information, please contact Andrea Thorpe, Director of the Richards Free Library at 863-3430 or [email protected]
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