FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE March 8, 2005 Contact: Barbara Verchot 503.227.2583

U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser to perform invocation of the next State Legislative Assembly

PORTLAND, Ore. ‐ Literary Arts is pleased to announce that Ted Kooser, current U.S. Poet Laureate at the Library of Congress, will provide the invocation at the Legislative Assembly at the state capitol in Salem at 11:00 a.m. on Thursday, March 17, 2005. This unique event was arranged in cooperation with the Oregon State Library and the Oregon Arts Commission. Kooser is in Oregon to open Literary Arts’ 5th annual Poetry Downtown series in Portland later that same evening.

Kooser’s appearances coincide with plans to reinstate a poet laureate in Oregon made possible by the Oregon Cultural Trust and a special partnership between the Oregon Arts Commission, the Oregon Council for the Humanities, the State Historic Preservation Office, the Oregon Historical Society and the Oregon Heritage Commission. This post was last held by the late William Stafford who resigned in 1989 after 15 years of service. Funds from the Oregon Cultural Trust will help pay a stipend for the laureate as well as travel funds to enable the laureate to create new work and travel throughout Oregon to read and speak. This is the first large scale partnership project through the Cultural Trust‹and the most significant collaborative use of Cultural Trust funds. First Lady Mary Oberst now chairs a special selection committee that will identify a new laureate. The new laureate will be announced within the next few months.

Ted Kooser, from Nebraska, is the first poet from the Great Plains to hold the distinguished position of U. S. Poet Laureate. The author of ten collections of poetry, Poetry Magazine captures the poet best when it says ʺKooser documents the dignities, habits and small griefs of daily life, our hunger for connection, our struggle to find balance in natural and unnaturally human worlds.ʺ

The fifth annual Poetry Downtown series, which features leading contemporary poets reading in an intimate downtown setting also presents W.S. Merwin on Tuesday, March 29, 2005; Maxine Kumin on Tuesday, April 12, 2005; August Kleinzahler on Tuesday, April 26, 2005. The readings will take place in the Atrium of the award‐winning Wieden+Kennedy building (224 NW 13th Ave) in the Pearl District. All readings take place at 7:30 p.m.; a question‐and‐answer session and book signing follow each reading. Series tickets: General Admission $65; Senior/College student $48. Single tickets: General Admission $18; Senior/College student $12; High School student $5. To order tickets, call Literary Arts at 503‐227‐2583 or order online at www.literary‐arts.org.

Portland Arts & Lectures (a program of Literary Arts) produces the Poetry Downtown series, VERB:Literature in Performance and a variety of Special Events.

Literary Arts is a statewide, nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting the importance of language as a means to express, explore and experience the world in which we live. The programs of Literary Arts are the Oregon Book Awards, Oregon Literary Fellowships, Poetry Downtown, Poetry In Motion®, Portland Arts & Lectures and Writers in the Schools. For more information about any of these programs, please contact Barbara Verchot at 503.227