March 30 poet Primus St.John

Primus St. John, raised by West Indian grandparents, grew up in New York City and for the past twenty-six years has taught literature and creative writing at Portland State University. One of the first poets published by Copper Canyon Press, he was one of the five artists who inaugurated the NEA's Poets in the Schools program. St. John has received wide recognition for his poetry, including a reading on National Public Radio, an Oregon Book Award for Poetry, and a nomination for the American Book Award. He's the author of several collections of poetry, including SKINS ON THE EARTH (Copper Canyon), LOVE IS NOT A CONSOLATION; IT IS a LIGHT (Carnegie Mellon), DREAMER (Carnegie Mellon), and COMMUNION, Poems 1976-1998 (Copper Canyon), as well as editor of two notable anthologies, ZERO MAKES ME HUNGRY (Scott-Foresman), and FROM HERE WE SPEAK (Oregon State University Press). Wrote the WASHINGTON FREE PRESS, "St. John's DREAMER demands to be read with Robert Hayden's classic poem 'Middle Passage" and Charles Johnson's novel of the same name. St. John has followed Hayden's poetic techniques in masterfully blending historical details of the slave trade with acute, contemporary perspectives on the fuller meanings of those facts." William Stafford wrote, "St. John's poetry helps us all feel related in one congenial humanity."

Available on campus by Primus St. John:
Communion
From Here We Speak: An Anthology of Oregon Poetry
Dreamer: Poems

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