Celebrating the Work of Former Alaska Poet Laureate John Haines

Alaska inspires awe and wonder and draws people who are searching for solitude and an expansive landscape. One such person was John Haines (1924–2011), who was born in Virginia but whose experience surviving as a homesteader in the Alaska wilderness fueled an outpouring of poetry that earned him numerous awards and honors, including two Guggenheim Fellowships and an appointment as Alaska poet laureate. As part of the “A Novel Idea… Read Together” program, Deschutes Public Library is pleased to welcome culture and literature scholar Neil Browne to the Downtown Bend Public Library on Sunday, April 14, 2013, for Second Sunday, the library’s monthly celebration of the written word. Browne will discuss Haines’s body of work and will read select poems. The presentation is free and open to the public. An open mic follows the reading.

“Haines brings the eye of an artist and the pen of the poet to bear on the American wilderness,” says Browne. “He is a far-reaching poet and essayist, and not all of his work is about the wilderness, although his experience in the Far North underpins all that he does. His writing engages art, politics, and the everyday lives and tasks of American people.”

Neil W. Browne is Assistant Professor of English at Oregon State University Cascades, where he teaches American literature and culture. He earned his M.A. and Ph.D. from Ohio University. Browne is the author of numerous articles as well as the book The World in Which We Occur: John Dewey, Pragmatist Ecology, and American Ecological Writing in the Twentieth Century (University of Alabama Press, 2007).

The 2013 “A Novel Idea” selection, The Snow Child, by Eowyn Ivey, takes place in Alaska during the 1920s as a couple homesteads an impossible land. Ivey carries the reader through the stark Alaska landscape without apology, threading the story together with a magical realism and hopeful persistence. Dozens of events between April 13 and May 4 invite residents of Deschutes County to explore the Alaska landscape, homesteading, art, food and more, culminating with a visit by author Ivey on May 3 and 4.

For more information about this or other library programs, please visit the library website at www.deschuteslibrary.org. People with disabilities needing accommodations (alternative formats, seating or auxiliary aides) should contact Tina at 541-312-1034.