Poet laureate Tami Haaland coming to Havre March 26

Montana State University-Northern

Montana State University-Northern's Chancellor's Lecture Series will host the Humanities Montana Speakers Bureau program "Montana's Poet Laureate" with Tami Haaland Thursday, March 26.

The free program will be at Hensler Auditorium of the Applied Technology Center at 7:30 p.m.

Sandra Alcosser, Montana's first poet laureate, said, "Tami Haaland's poems touch the interior of the world, the way a bat might test, through echolocation, the walls of a cave, or a whale might sound the interior of the sea."

Poet and critic Mark Jarman has called her new book, "When We Wake in the Night," "a remarkable achievement," characterized by "clarity and sanity and fluent formal skill," while poet and composer Kate Light characterizes her work as "resonant, heartfelt, and startling."

Haaland will share her work and answer questions afterward.

Haaland is professor of creative writing and literature at Montana State University Billings. She is the author of two books of poetry, "Breath in Every Room," winner of the Nicholas Roerich First Book Award, and "When We Wake in the Night."

Haaland has been teaching creative writing and literature courses at Montana Women's Prison since 2008, and she coordinates a writing-in-the-schools program for Arts without Boundaries.

She has received an Innovation Award from the Montana Arts Council a Humanities Hero Award and research fellowship from Humanities Montana, and several excellence awards for her teaching. Her work has appeared in many journals and anthologies and has been featured on the Writer's Almanac and American Life in Poetry.

The presentation is free and open to the public.

Partial funding for the Speakers Bureau program is provided by a legislative grant from Montana's Cultural Trust and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

For more information, call Northern 265-3700.

People can visit the website to see the Spring 2015 Chancellor's Lecture Series at http://msun.edu/news/calendar/events2014/ChancellorSeries.aspx