SU Poet Waters Nominated for 'Los Angeles Times' Book Award

SALISBURY, MD---The work of Dr. Michael Waters, professor of English at Salisbury University on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, has caught the attention of literary critics on a different coast.

Waters’ most recent poetry collection, Darling Vulgarity, has been nominated for the prestigious Los Angeles Times Book Award. Vulgarity is one of five books nominated for the prize in poetry. The winner is announced during a ceremony Friday, April 27, at the University of California Los Angeles.

Waters has published eight books of poetry, including Darling Vulgarity (2006); Parthenopi: New and Selected Poems (2001); Green Ash, Red Maple, Black Gum (1997)—these titles from BOA Editions—Bountiful (1992); The Burden Lifters (1989); and Anniversary of the Air (1985)—these titles from Carnegie Mellon UP. He has edited/co-edited several volumes, including Contemporary American Poetry (Houghton Mifflin, 2006) and Perfect in Their Art: Poems on Boxing from Homer to Ali (Southern Illinois UP, 2003).

The recipient of a Fellowship in Creative Writing from the National Endowment for the Arts, several Individual Artist Awards from the Maryland State Arts Council and three Pushcart Prizes, he has published poems in numerous journals, including Poetry, The Yale Review, The American Poetry Review, Rolling Stone, The Kenyon Review, The Southern Review, The Gettysburg Review, The Georgia Review, The North American Review and Ploughshares. In 2004, he chaired the Poetry Panel for The National Book Award.

Waters joined the faculty of Salisbury University in 1978. He has also taught at Ohio University and the University of Maryland and has been Visiting Professor of American Literature at the University of Athens, Greece, Banister Writer-in-Residence at Sweet Briar College, Stadler Poet-in-Residence at Bucknell University and Distinguished Poet-in-Residence at Wichita State University. This spring he serves as a Fulbright Lecturer at University Al. I. Cuza in Iasi, Romania.

He has taught for several summer programs, including the Catskill Poetry Workshop, the Writers’ Center at Chautauqua, the West Virginia Writers’ Workshop, the Prague Summer Program and the New England College MFA Program and has been the recipient of residency fellowships from Yaddo, The MacDowell Colony, The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, The Anderson Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, The Tyrone Guthrie Centre (Ireland), Le Chateau de Lavigny (Switzerland) and The St. James Cavalier Centre (Malta). Waters has read his poems at universities throughout the United States as well as at universities and other venues abroad, including the Al-Merbid Poetry Festival in Baghdad, Iraq.

Critic Floyd Collins has written in The Gettysburg Review: “I cannot call to mind anyone of Waters’ generation who is currently writing better poetry.”

For more information call 410-543-6030 or visit the SU Web site at www.salisbury.edu.