Award-winning poet to read at Bates

Bates alumna Jean Monahan ’81 will read from her two books of poetry, Hands and Believe it or Not at 3 p.m. Sunday, March 21, in the Special Collections Room of Ladd Library. The public is invited to attend the Readings with Bates Authors presentation free of charge.

“Jean Monahan’s Hands surprises the reader at every turn. These are poems of brilliant physicality in description, dramatic and often objective,” wrote poet Donald Hall in awarding Monahan the 1991 Anhinga Prize.

Vijay Seshadri, author of Wild Kingdom, described Monahan’s poems as “by turns tender and violent, ruefully intelligent and well-informed, and absolutely authentic.”

Monahan, has won the Writer’s Voice of the West Side YMCA’s Open Voice Award and the John Williams Andrews Narrative Poetry Contest. She also was named runner-up in the 1991 National Poetry Competition.