Award-winning poet to speak at Longwood

Poet Nathaniel Perry will read from and discuss his works Monday, Sept. 9, at 8 p.m. in Longwood University’s Wygal Auditorium.

Perry’s first book of poems, Nine Acres, won the 2011 American Poetry Review/Honickman First Book Prize. The 52-poem collection, published in fall 2011 by the American Poetry Review with Copper Canyon Press, was chosen for the award from among more than 1,000 entries. Perry is Elliott Assistant Professor of English at Hampden-Sydney College and editor of The Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review.

Critics have called Nine Acres, written in the style of a 1930s farming manual, a "beautiful, subtle and important book" and praised Perry for his "attentive sense of place, his deft and unobtrusive formal craft and a subtle exploration of that intimacy with the land that comes of thoughtful cultivation." The poems are written in meter and rhyme, an uncommon approach in contemporary poetry.

Perry’s appearance is the first in the 2013-14 Longwood Authors Series.