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 Three-term U.S. poet laureate Robert Pinsky will be the featured poet at the 10th annual Delaware Valley Poetry
Festival to be held Friday, Oct. 5, at 7:30 p.m., at the historic Old Stone Church in Hunterdon County. Prior to the Festival, Mr. Pinsky will be available for a book signing at the Book
Garden in Frenchtown, NJ from 4:00 to 5:00 PM.
Mr. Pinsky kicked off the poetry festival as featured reader at
the inaugural event in 1998. The festival has since featured an impressive roster of distinguished poets, including former U.S. poet laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner Louise Gluck,
Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner Paul Muldoon, National Book Award recipient Gerald Stern, and award-winning poets Thomas Lux, Stephen Dobyns, Maria
Mazziotti Gillan and Diane Wakowski, as well as dozens of New Jersey and Pennsylvania poets.
Mr. Pinsky served as U.S. poet laureate from 1997 through
2000. As poet laureate, he started the Favorite Poem Project, in which thousands of Americans from all walks of life have shared and recited their favorite poem in recordings and in print anthologies.
Mr. Pinsky is the author of six acclaimed books of poetry, including the most recent, Jersey Rain. His collection The Figured Wheel was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and
received the Lenore Marshall Award and the Ambassador Book Award of the English Speaking Union. His most recent chapbook, published last year by Sarabande Books, is First Things to Hand.
Mr. Pinsky's books about poetry include Poetry and the World, nominated for a National Books Critics' Circle
Award, and, more recently, Democracy, Culture and the Voice of Poetry. His translation of The Inferno of Dante received the Los Angeles Times Book Award and the Howard Morton Landon Prize for translation.
Mr. Pinsky is poetry editor of the online magazine Slate. He has appeared regularly on "The News Hour with
Jim Lehrer," and writes the weekly "Poet's Choice" column for the Washington Post. He was elected in 1999
to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His poems have appeared in such magazines as The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Threepenny and American Poetry Review and in the Best American Poetry
anthologies. A native of LongBranch, and a graduate of Rutgers University, He teaches in the graduate writing program at Boston University.
Mr. Pinsky's hour-long appearance will also feature a theatrical presentation, based on a Pinsky poem, by River Union Stage.
Books by Mr. Pinsky will be available for purchase and autographing at an informal gathering after the reading, courtesy of Borders Books and Music in Flemington, N.J.
The Delaware Valley Poetry Festival is presented in partnership by River Union Stage of Frenchtown and event founder and coordinator Nicholas DiGiovanni of Alexandria Township, a journalist and novelist.
Funding is provided by the Hunterdon County Cultural and Heritage Commission and the New Jersey State
Council for the Arts. Use of Old Stone Church is courtesy of First Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Hunterdon County.
Admission is free but a $5 donation is recommended. Seating is limited and first-come, first-served. The Old
Stone Church is located on Route 519, Kingwood Township, near Frenchtown. For more information or to
request arrangements for those with disabilities or the hearing-impaired, call Nick DiGiovanni at (908) 500-4000 or RUS at (908) 996-3685. For directions CLICK HERE.
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