Wichita, Kan. – The Newman University Department of English will present nationally renowned poet Red Hawk reading from his works, at 7 p.m., Thursday, Nov. 12 in the Jabara Flexible Theatre, inside the De Mattias Fine Arts Center on the Newman campus. The event is free and open to the public. A book sale and signing will follow.
Red Hawk (Robert Moore, Ph.D.) is the author of five collections of poetry: Journey of the Medicine Man; The Art of Dying; The Sioux Dog Dance; The Way of Power, and Wreckage With A Beating Heart. His newest work, Self-Observation: The Awakening of Conscience, is a prose contemplation of the practice of self-study. He was the Hodder Fellow in the Humanities at Princeton University and is now professor of English at the University of Arkansas in Monticello. More than 80 of his poems have been published in magazines such as The Atlantic, Kenyon Review, Poetry, Atlanta Review, Shenandoah and many others.
Red Hawk earned a bachelor’s degree in English and history, and a master’s degree in English, both from Illinois State University. He earned a doctorate in Contemporary American Literature from the University of Cincinnati. He has received several awards and grants, and had poetry readings with such luminaries as Allen Ginsburg and former U.S. Poet Laureate Rita Dove.
Red Hawk has also earned praise from many poets, critics and editors. The late renowned editor of The New York Quarterly William Packard said, “Red Hawk is like Whitman because he can contain multitudes and yet he is always so authentically himself. . . . These poems are desperately important to us all today because Red Hawk has that rarest of all virtues – Virgil had it, Dante had it, Shakespeare had it – a sense of civilization.” Pulitzer Prize winning poet Gary Snyder said, “Red Hawk’s is a powerful, wise, and down-home voice,” while National Book Award winner Hayden Carruth said, “He made (these poems) extraordinarily convincing. He writes in a plain style with great daring, economy, and power.”
