Description
Poetry. "I had the privilege of interviewing Richard Hague not so many years ago about poetry and teaching and this, among the many things we discussed, will always remain with me: as far back as his college years he knew that his job 'was not to become a poet that sounded the same at 60 as he had at 20 and whose subject matters remained the same at 60 as they were at 20. Given the variety of life, and given the variety of things that are interesting and things that poetry can be made from, why the hell would you want to limit yourself to one sort of specialized niche that is all yours? Poetry is vast. It's large. You follow Whitman's 'I am large, I contain multitudes.' And so, too, are these poems massive and multifarious in how and what they approach, but seen always through Dick Hague's exacting eye for the specific and strange. His whole universe of poetry is 'a kind of resonance and harmony' where '[e]ven language folds into itself / in odd places' and we, his readers, are grateful that it is so."–Pauletta Hansel
Author Bio
Richard Hague is a native Appalachian, born in Steubenville, Ohio, just across the river from Weirton, West Virginia. He is Writer-in-Residence at Thomas More College. He has conducted workshops, lectures and readings all over the Midwest and Appalachia. Winner of four Ohio Arts Council fellowships in poetry and creative nonfiction, he is a member of the Academy of American Poets, the Appalachian Studies Association, the Southern Appalachian Writers Cooperative, The Mercantile Library, The Literary Club of Cincinnati, and the Irish Heritage Center of Cincinnati. His Milltown Natural: Essays and Stories from a Life (Bottom Dog Press) was a National Book Award nominee. For Ripening (Ohio State University Press) he was named co-Poet of the Year in Ohio in l985. Alive In Hard Country (Bottom Dog Press) was named Poetry Book of the Year by the Appalachian Writers Association, and DURING THE RECENT EXTINCTIONS: NEW & SELECTED POEMS 1984-2012 (Dos Madres Press, 2012) won the Weatherford Award in Poetry. STUDIED DAYS - POEMS EARLY & LATE IN APPALACHIA (Dos Madres Press, 2017) is his latest collection since BEASTS, RIVER, DRUNK MEN, GARDEN, BURST, & LIGHT: SEQUENCES AND LONG POEMS (Dos Madres Press, 2016). He has also edited two anthologies, Quarried: Three Decades of Pine Mt. Sand & Gravel, Southern Appalachian Writers Cooperative (2015) and REALMS OF THE MOTHERS:THE FIRST DECADE OF DOS MADRES PRESS (Dos Madres Press, 2016) He continues to live in Cincinnati, and to operate Erie Gardens, a small urban organic farm.
Author City: CINCINNATI, OH USA