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Poetry With Michael Sowder & Edward Hirsch On Thursday's Access Utah

Michael Lionstar

Edward Hirsch is the celebrated author of nine books of poetry. He is also the author of “A Poet's Glossary,” a complete compendium of poetry terms and the author of the bestseller about poetry, “How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry.” He has received numerous awards and fellowships, including a MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Prix de Rome. He is an international advocate for poetry and serves as a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. He taught creative writing at Wayne State University and the University of Houston and is now president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, which offers fellowships to those engaged in any field of knowledge and creation of the arts.

Poet and essayist Michael Sowder is a professor of English and an affiliated professor of religious studies at Utah State University.  The themes of his poetry and writing include wilderness, fatherhood, poetics, Buddhism, yoga, and spirituality. A long-time meditation teacher, he is the 

Credit USU English Department

founder of the Amrita Sangha for Integral Spirituality, an nonprofit organization dedicated to exploring and teaching the wisdom of the world’s contemplative traditions.  Part of his work includes teaching meditation and creative writing in jails and prisons. His books include the poetry collections “House Under the Moon,” and “The Empty Boat,” and a study of Walt Whitman’s poetry titled “Whitman’s Ecstatic Union.”

Tom Williams worked as a part-time UPR announcer for a few years and joined Utah Public Radio full-time in 1996. He is a proud graduate of Uintah High School in Vernal and Utah State University (B. A. in Liberal Arts and Master of Business Administration.) He grew up in a family that regularly discussed everything from opera to religion to politics. He is interested in just about everything and loves to engage people in conversation, so you could say he has found the perfect job as host “Access Utah.” He and his wife Becky, live in Logan.