Media Contact: Kate Callen, (619) 534-0361

CHARLES BERNSTEIN RECEIVES 1999 PEARCE NEW POETRY PRIZE

Charles Bernstein is the recipient of the 1999 Roy Harvey Pearce/Archive for New Poetry Prize, awarded biennially by the University of California, San Diego to an American poet who has made a lifelong contribution to American poetry and literary scholarship.

Bernstein, the David Gray Professor of Poetry and Letters at the State University of New York at Buffalo, will be awarded the Pearce Prize and will present a public lecture and poetry reading on Wednesday, May 12 at 4:30 p.m. in the Seuss Room in Geisel Library on the UCSD campus. The event is free and open to the public.

Bernstein first appeared on the national literary scene in 1978 when he and Bruce Andrews launched the short-lived but influential magazine L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E. He is the author of two collections of critical essays, Content’s Dream and A Poetics, and of 20 books of poetry, including Dark City, Rough Trades, and, with Susan Bee, Log Rhythms.

His newest book, My Way: Speeches and Poems, deploys a wide variety of speeches and poems, interviews and essays, to explore the place of poetry in American culture. Marjorie Perloff, author of Wittgenstein’s Ladder and distinguished professor of American literature at Stanford University, calls My Way "quite simply one of the most brilliant, exciting literary books to be published in the nineties."

The Roy Harvey Pearce/Archive for New Poetry Prize was established in 1995 by the Friends of the UCSD Libraries to pay homage to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s concept of the "poet-scholar." It is named for Roy Harvey Pearce, a founding member of UCSD’s Department of Literature and the founder of UCSD’s Archive for New Poetry, one of the largest collections in the United States of contemporary American poetry.

For further information about the May 12 award ceremony/lecture/reading, please contact Lynda Claassen at 619-534-2533.