D.C. poets at Center for Inquiry on Wednesday

Two leading Washington, D.C.-area poets -- Hiram Larew and Kim Roberts -- are slated to read from their recent collections this Wednesday evening (July 2) at 7:30 p.m. in Just Buffalo's Literary Cafe at the Center for Inquiry, 1310 Sweet Home Road in Amherst. 

Hiram Larew's work, which one reviewer has described as "like eavesdropping on Emerson having a beer with Frank O’Hara," has been published in over 90 magazines and journals and been awarded the Louisiana Literature Poetry Prize, The Southern Poetry Association’s Poetry Ribbon, The Washington Review's poetry award, the Rites of Spring Poetry Prize and the New Jersey Council for the Arts'  Allen Ginsberg Award. On Wednesday, he'll read from his 2007 collection More Than Anything, which was published by D.C.-based Vrzhu Press.

Larew is co-founder of The Poet Connection, a resource for poets in Prince George’s County Maryland.  By day, he is a scientist employed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Kim Roberts is the author of two books of poems, most recently The Kimnama (Vrzhu Press, 2007), a book-length poem about the author's experiences living in Northern India, which she will read from on Wednesday.

About her work, The Montserrat Review has written "gentle lines give us a sense of dream places that wake us up to marvels" and Rattle says "Musical repetitions, the use of opposites, and the theme of connection, recall Whitman."

She edits two literary journals: Beltway Poetry Quarterly and the Delaware Poetry Review.  Her research on the literary history of Washington, D.C. -- in particular on Walt Whitman, Langston Hughes, and Zora Neale Hurston -- has been widely disseminated in scholarly journals, at conferences and in walking-tour brochures.

She has received fellowship grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Humanities Council of Washington, and the D.C. Commission on the Arts, and has been a writer-in-residence at eleven artist colonies throughout the United States.

For more information about Larew or Roberts and their new books, visit the Web site of their publisher, Vrzhu Press. A reception honoring the poets and Center for Inquiry Literary Cafe host Perry Nicholas, who was recently selected to receive the Chancellor's Award in teaching from Erie Community College, will follow the reading.

--R.D. Pohl