Nationally Renowned Writer Kay Ryan to Read at 2nd Annual Marcus Memorial Poetry Reading

The 2nd Annual Morton Marcus Memorial Poetry Reading featuring Pulitzer Prize and MacArthur Fellowship winner Kay Ryan will take place on Sunday, November 20 at 3:00 PM, in the UCSC Music Recital Hall. This free event takes place after the opening of the McHenry Library Special Collections Morton Marcus Poetry Archive, on display in the library from 1-3 p.m.

The 2nd Annual Morton Marcus Memorial Poetry Reading honors poet, teacher, and film critic Morton Marcus (1936–2009). Marcus, a cultural icon of Santa Cruz County, passed away from cancer in October of 2009. He was named Santa Cruz County Artist of the Year 1999, and was also a recipient of the Gail Rich Award in 2007 for his outstanding contributions to the cultural life of Santa Cruz.

Throughout his life, Marcus actively brought together many of the art communities in the county. Among his active pursuits was his great belief in the importance and richness of poetry to our culture. The Annual Morton Marcus Memorial Poetry Reading, co-sponsored by Poetry Santa Cruz, Ow Family Properties, Cabrillo College and UCSC, plans to honor Marcus and his beliefs by bringing an acclaimed writer to the admission-free Memorial Reading each year. This year’s inaugural event features acclaimed poet and Kay Ryan.

Kay Ryan is an accomplished poet whose immediately distinctive and tightly woven verse is grounded in incisive explorations of seemingly familiar language, ideas, and experiences. Independent from schools of poetry and literary fashion, her mode of expression is a disarmingly clear and accessible style, characterized by concision, rhyme, wordplay, and wit. A part-time remedial English teacher for over thirty years at the College of Marin in Kentfield, California, Ryan published her first major book of
verse, Strangely Marked Metal (1985), at the age of forty. Since then, she has published seven additional volumes of poetry, including The Best of It: New and Selected Poems (2010).

Ryan’s awards include the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, a Guggenheim fellowship, an Ingram Merrill Award, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Union League Poetry Prize, the Maurice English Poetry Award, and four Pushcart Prizes. Her work has been selected four times for The Best American Poetry and was included in The Best of the Best American Poetry 1988-1997.  She has received a Pulitzer Prize, was the U.S. Poet Laureate from 2008 to 2010, and was awarded the 2011 MacArthur Fellowship Award.

The afternoon, hosted by Santa Cruz’s first poet laureate Gary Young, will highlight Ryan reading from her own work, as well as readings by Shirley Ancheta and Jeff Tagami.

--Jana Marcus