Craig Morgan Teicher '01 returns to Bates to read from his award-winning book of poetry, Brenda is in the Room and Other Poems, at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 18, in Skelton Lounge, Chase Hall, 56 Campus Ave.

This event, sponsored by the Bates English department, is open to the public and free of charge.

Teicher's debut volume won the 2007 Colorado Prize for Poetry and has received high critical praise. Marit MacArthur of The Bloomsbury Review writes that "many [of Teicher's] poems engage the imagination and do what great poetry should: remind us that our mundane lives, and the mere fact of language are utterly strange and magical."

During his four years at Bates, Teicher studied with Visiting Professor of English Rob Farnsworth. "I knew of no other student during his time or a fair time afterward who was as earnest about poetry and what poetry could do," Farnsworth says. "There’s enormous exuberance in his work, different flavors and timbres."

After Bates, Teicher earned a master's at Columbia University and settled down in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he teaches at Pratt Institute and works as an associate editor for Publishers Weekly and a contributing editor of Pleiades.

BOA Editions, Ltd., will publish his collection of fables, Cradle Book, in spring 2010.