野狼社区

Every spring since 1999, the Thatcher Hoffman Smith Poetry series brings a nationally renowned, award-winning poet to our campus. The event features live readings of their work, book signings, and an open mic sessions for local poets to showcase their talents.

"the whole galaxy is cartwheeling in silence through the night" 

from George Bilgere's "Going to Bed"

This fall, Thatcher Hoffman Smith Poetry Series is excited to welcome poet !

Join us at 10 a.m. and 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 4, for a poetry reading in the Kerr McGee Auditorium at Meinders School of Business, NW 26th & N. McKinley Ave, 野狼社区. Community members are also invited to come early to the evening reading and share their own poetry at the open mic, beginning at 6:30 p.m. The evening reading will be followed by a book signing. As always, our friends at will be on hand to sell copies of the poet's books. Admission is free!

George came into national prominence in 2002 when then U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins chose his collection of poems, The Good Kiss, to win the University of Akron Poetry Prize. Collins then named George one of two Witter Bynner Fellows for 2002 and invited him to read at the Library of Congress. In 2006 Ed Field chose his book, Haywire, to win the prestigious May Swenson Poetry Award, and radio host Garrison Keillor began reading George鈥檚 poems on his daily National Public Radio broadcast, The Writer鈥�s Almanac. The popularity of George鈥檚 poems on the show led to an appearance on Keillor鈥檚 long-running NPR radio show, A Prairie Home Companion.

George鈥檚 many honors include the 2022 Readers鈥� Choice Award from Rattle Magazine and the 2021 Editor鈥檚 Choice Award from New Ohio Review. He has received grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ohio Arts Council, the Pushcart Foundation, the Fulbright Foundation, and the Witter Bynner Foundation through the Library of Congress. He has won the May Swenson Poetry Award, the Society of Midland Authors Poetry Prize, the Devins Award, the University of Akron Poetry Prize, the Cleveland Arts Prize, and the 2023 Rattle Chapbook Prize. His poems have appeared in Poetry, Kenyon Review, Best American Poetry, New Ohio Review, Field, Georgia Review, Southern Review, Sewanee Review, Ploughshares, New England Review, and elsewhere.

George is Distinguished Professor of English at John Carroll University in Cleveland, Ohio, where he lives with his lovely wife and two fine little boys.

"Misting" by George Bilgere

is the one thing involving flowers
I鈥檓 reasonably good at. Daybreak
finds me in the yard with my hose,
attentive as a bee. What a pleasure
to choose 鈥淢ist鈥� on my watering gun
and drift like a cloud above the roses.
Last month my sister died, a storm
of lightning in her brain. And now
this news that someone who once
was the object of all my bouquets
is spending her final summer.
Each day brings more bad weather,
which is another way of saying
I鈥檓 in my sixties. But here, in the frail
September morning, my hand tipped in fog,
the flowers lift their faces to me
with bright, mystifying questions,
and for once I have an answer.

Watch George Bilgere read "Horseplay"