COM English Basic Skills Professor Begins Second Term as Poet Laureate

Acclaimed Poet Kay Ryan Plans to Focus on Importance of Community Colleges

KENTFIELD, Calif.—Aug. 3, 2009—A self-described “unlikely” poet laureate, Kay Ryan is gearing up for her second term as the nation’s poet Laureate.

"Kay has been an uplifting presence as Laureate during the past year, and her poetry continues to awe and delight readers,” said Librarian of Congress James H. Billington who has appointed Ryan to her second term.

Ryan, who taught English basic skills to College of Marin students for more than 30 years, was first appointed in July 2008 to succeed Laureate Charles Simic. Since then it has been a year of travel and poetry readings, interviews, literary discussions and workshops.

In the 2008-2009 year, she read her work at the Library of Congress annual literary series to a standing room audience and was the featured guest at the Library’s National Book Festival. She served as a panelist at the "Robert Burns at 250" conference sponsored by the Library’s American Folklife Center and the government of Scotland and selected two gifted young poets to receive the Library’s prestigious 2009 Witter Bynner Fellowships in Poetry. She took part in the poetry reading in San Francisco for "National Treasures, Local Treasures: The Library of Congress at Your Fingertips," a touring program sponsored by the Library’s Center for the Book.

“In her appearances at the Library, Kay has captivated audiences with her fresh insights into the beauty, power and importance of poetry,” Billington said. “We are looking forward to her announcement this fall of a project she hopes to establish and we are glad she is available to serve in this important position in 2009-2010."

Poets Laureate are appointed for one-year terms that are sometimes extended for a year by agreement of the Library and the Laureate. Ryan was the Library’s 16th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry. It is the only federally designated position for a literary artist in the U.S. She succeeds a long line of distinguished poets who have served in the position, including Simic, Donald Hall, Ted Kooser, Louise Glück, Billy Collins, Stanley Kunitz, Robert Pinsky, Robert Hass and Rita Dove.

In a recent Newsweek article, Ryan, who lives an otherwise quiet life in Marin, said she was initially against accepting the position in 2008 but did so at the request of her wife Carol Adair, her most devoted reader, who was critically ill. Adair died this year, which, according to Ryan, is part of the reason she decided to keep busy with a second term.

This year, she wants to promote community colleges. "There's no glamour attached to attending one or being an instructor in one," Ryan told Newsweek. "But the quality of education and the commitment to education in community colleges is remarkable."

In an interview earlier this year, she told PBS that the role of the Laureate is “completely paradoxical to my nature.” The nature of the poet “is to be someone who insists on being individual and seeing things from a very particular point of view and having a voice that isn't like anybody else's voice,” she said. “As the poet laureate, one is compelled to generalize about poetry and do the sort of -- use language in a way that is -- becomes public language and attempts to not insult too many people at one time.”

Ryan’s latest book, "The Jam Jar Lifeboat," is an illustrated collection of poems that was published in December by Red Berry Editions in Kensington. Other books include "The Niagara River" (2005); "Say Uncle" (2000); "Elephant Rocks" (1996); "Flamingo Watching" (1994); "Strangely Marked Metal" (1985); and "Dragon Acts to Dragon Ends" (1983). A book of new and selected poems, “The Best of It,” comes out next spring.

Her many awards include the 2005 Gold Medal for Poetry from the San Francisco Commonwealth Club; the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize from The Poetry Foundation in 2004; a Guggenheim fellowship the same year; and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship as well as the Maurice English Poetry Award in 2001, the Union League Poetry Prize in 2000; and an Ingram Merrill Foundation Award in 1995. She has won four Pushcart Prizes and has been selected four different years for the annual volumes of the Best American Poetry.

The Poetry and Literature Center at the Library of Congress is the home of the Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry, a position that has existed since 1936. More than 40 of the nation’s most eminent poets have served as either Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress or, as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry. The Laureate suggests authors to read in the literary series and plans other special literary events during the reading season.

Ryan is a native Californian born in 1945 in San Jose, California. She grew up in the Mojave Desert area and attended Antelope Valley Community College before transferring to UCLA where she received both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees. Since 1971, Ryan has lived in Marin County.

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