Exeter, NH (January 31, 2007)—On Wednesday, February 21, at 7:30 p.m., acclaimed Irish Poet Eamon Grennan will read his poems in the Academy Assembly Hall. Grennan is Exeter’s 2006-07 Lamont Poet. The reading is free and open to the public, and will be followed by a booksigning. The Assembly Hall is located on the second floor of the Academy Building on Front Street in Exeter.

Born in Dublin in 1941, and educated at University College Dublin, where he studied English and Italian, and English at Harvard, Grennan has established himself as a preeminent voice in a generation of Irish poets that includes Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley, Derek Mahon and Eavan Boland.

His collections of poetry include The Quick of It (2005); Renvyle, Winter (2003); Still Life with Waterfall (2002), winner of the Lenore Marshall Award; Selected & New Poems (2000); Relations: New & Selected Poems (1998); So It Goes (1995); As If It Matters (1992); What Light There Is and Other Poems (1989); What Light There Is (1987); and Wildly for Days (1983). 

His Leopardi: Selected Poems (1997) won the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. A collection of critical essays followed, Facing the Music: Irish Poetry in the Twentieth Century (1999). His poems appear regularly in magazines on both sides of the Atlantic, including Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry London, The New Yorker, The Nation, Threepenny Review and The New Republic.

As well as a number of Pushcart Prizes, Grennan has also received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities and from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. He teaches at Vassar College where he is the Dexter M. Ferry Jr., Professor of English. He divides his time between Poughkeepsie, NY, and the West of Ireland.

The Library’s Lamont Poetry Series is supported by the Lamont Fund, established in 1982 by Corliss Lamont ’20. Two poets are invited each year to read their poetry and attend English classes. Each visiting poet is photographed and asked to present the library with a manuscript poem, which is framed and hung on the fourth floor of the library. The collection of framed manuscript poems includes the works of such noted poets as Jorge Luis Borges, Seamus Heaney, Gwendolyn Brooks, Joseph Brodsky and Allen Ginsberg. The series continues to bring remarkable poets to Exeter and remains a testimony to Mr. Lamont, who died in 1995.

For further information, contact Jacquelyn H. Thomas, Academy Librarian at (603) 777-3328. A complete listing of upcoming events is available on the Phillips Exeter Academy public events line at (603) 777-4309 and on our website at http://www.exeter.edu/. For directions to Phillips Exeter Academy, call (603) 777-4330. To learn more about upcoming events at Exeter, check the News & Events section of the website.

Phillips Exeter Academy is a coeducational, independent preparatory school that was founded in 1781 and originated the system of instruction known as Harkness teaching in 1931. In the spirit of its charter to foster both goodness and knowledge, students come from a wide variety of geographic, economic, racial and religious backgrounds. The diverse student body comes from approximately 45 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and 26 foreign countries.