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Garrison Keillor will be reading Gary’s poem “The signature mark of autumn” on The Writer’s Almanac, Saturday, October 9.

Gary will be participating in the Annual Conference of the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP), held April 7–10 in Denver, in an event, The Poetry Society of America Centennial Celebration: 100 Years of American Poetry, marking the hundredth anniversary of the nation’s oldest poetry organization. Recent PSA Award winners will read their own work, as well as important American poems of the past century. Appearing along with Gary will be Cyrus Cassells,
B. H. Fairchild, Kimiko Hahn, Joy Harjo, Alice Quinn, Alan Shapiro, Jean Valentine, Diane Wakoski,
and Matthew Zapruder.

by Scott Rappaport

UC Santa Cruz humanities lecturer Gary Young has been named the first-ever Poet Laureate of Santa Cruz County.

The announcement was made by the Cultural Council of Santa Cruz County at its annual Gail Rich Awards celebration held at the Rio Theatre.

The job of the poet laureate is to advance and enliven the art of poetry in Santa Cruz County.

As the inaugural poet laureate, Young will act as an advocate for poetry, literature, and the arts, and contribute to Santa Cruz’s cultural legacy through public readings and participation in civic events.

Gary, County Supervisor Neal Coonerty,
and Cultural Council Executive Director Michelle Williams

This marks the second major honor for Young in the past year. Last March, he received the prestigious 2009 Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America.

“Poets, like prophets, frequently find no honor in their own land, so it is especially gratifying to be recognized by the Cultural Council of Santa Cruz County,” said Young.

“Santa Cruz is blessed with an abundance of superlative artists and writers, and to represent our area’s many exceptional poets is a great distinction, and a humbling one,” he added.

Young graduated from UC Santa Cruz in 1973 and received his M.F.A. from UC Irvine in 1975. He currently teaches poetry as a lecturer in creative writing in the UC Santa Cruz Literature Department.

Young’s books include Pleasure, Hands, The Dream of a Moral Life (winner of the James D. Phelan Award), Days, Braver Deeds (winner of the Peregrine Smith Poetry Prize), and No Other Life (winner of the Poetry Society of America’s William Carlos Williams Award for best book of the year published by a university, literary, or independent press).

Since 1975, Young has also designed, illustrated, and printed limited-edition books and broadsides at his Greenhouse Review Press. His print work is represented in many collections, including the Museum of Modern Art and the Getty Center for the Arts.

“The creation of this new Poet Laureate position says more about the community’s support of the arts than it does about my own personal accomplishments,” Young observed.

“This is yet another example of the community’s recognition that encouragement of the arts is a fundamental component of a fully functioning, exuberant culture.”

Michelle Williams, executive director of the Cultural Council of Santa Cruz, said that “a great deal of passion and expertise went into creating this position,” adding,“you will have many chances to hear Gary speak and read in the upcoming two years.”

Williams noted that the tradition of naming a poet laureate began in seventeenth-century England. The United States Library of Congress appointed an official Consultant in Poetry in 1937, and the name of that position was changed to Poet Laureate in 1985.

California became the first state to name a poet laureate informally, and the position was established by the legislature in 2001.

The Cultural Council of Santa Cruz County runs programs and services to support the artistic health and vibrancy of the community, advancing the arts by providing funding, advocacy, and support to artists and arts organizations.

As the state- and county-designated arts umbrella organization for Santa Cruz County, the Cultural Council’s programs include the annual Open Studios Art Tour, the SPECTRA teaching artist program in local schools, support grants for artists and arts organizations, and Fast Track matching grants to schools for arts education.

by Wallace Baine

As a young man, Gary Young moved to Santa Cruz with the specific intention of becoming a poet.

Forty years later, after an already remarkable career, that ambition has now become official.

Tuesday, during the Gail Rich Awards ceremony at the Rio Theatre, Young was named Santa Cruz County’s first poet laureate, a ceremonial position designed to raise the profile of poetry in the public consciousness.

“One of the nice things about this honor is that it’s so unexpected,” said Young, who is not only considered one of Santa Cruz’s finest poets but among its most accomplished fine-art printers. “Poetry is such a marginal art, that we’re really blessed that it, and all the arts, are honored and treasured like they are in this community.”

As the new poet laureate, Young’s main duty is to develop a program to promote poetry in the schools or the public arena and he’s already envisioning bring poets in county classrooms, adding a poetry element in the schools without putting extra pressure on teachers. He also wants to instigate a “poetry on the bus” program which will put poems on advertising panels inside county buses.

Young, who grew up in Southern California, came to Santa Cruz in 1969 where he became a protégé of the late William Everson, a celebrated poet and small-press printer.

“The ground here was so fertile,” he said of the era that also produced such prominent Santa Cruz poetry figures as Stephen Kessler, Joe Stroud, Morton Marcus, David Swanger and Ellen Bass.

Young is a humanities lecturer at UC Santa Cruz and also teaches at Georgiana Bruce Kirby School in Santa Cruz.

The poet laureate position was created by the Cultural Council of Santa Cruz County in conjunction with Poetry Santa Cruz. Also part of the project was the Santa Cruz Public Library System, the Santa Cruz County Office of Education and Santa Cruz County Parks.

The Cultural Council’s selection panel, said Young, initiated a rigorous application process.

“They were very thorough,” he said. “They took it seriously.”

The poet laureate honor comes on the heels of a significant national accomplishment. Young was chosen the 2009 winner of the Shelley Memorial Award, a $3,500 award sponsored by the Poetry Society of America.

In volumes such as No Other Life and Pleasure, Young has become one of the country’s foremost practitioners of the prose poem. His work has appeared in several prominent literary and poetry journals. He has also been awarded the Pushcart Prize, a James D. Phelan Literary Award and a National Endowment of the Humanities grant.

Gary will be featured in the Visiting Author Readings series at the YMCA’s Downtown Writer’s Center, YMCA of Greater Syracuse, 340 Montgomery Street, Syracuse, New York, on Friday, October 23 at 7:00. He also has an exhibition of letterpress broadsides on display there for the month of October.

Gary Young introduced Morton Marcus at the poet’s “last poetry reading” at the Capitola Book Café. As Gary said in his introduction, “The day Mort went into the hospital for surgery, he rushed me a new poem he’d been working on that morning. Who else would do that? I had images of him pushing the anesthesiologist away and saying, ‘Wait a minute, buddy, I need to finish this last stanza.’ Our friend and colleague Stephen Kessler describes Mort as the Brett Favre of poetry — he keeps jumping up for one more game.” Young made a point of situating his friend among the other lights of his generation when he continued, “Mort has had great success in many arenas, but he is first and foremost a poet, as his ten volumes of poetry attest. When I was finishing graduate school, a section of my oral exams was on contemporary American poets. I spoke about the poets that excited me the most at that time, the mid-seventies: James Wright, Robert Bly, Charles Simic, Elizabeth Bishop, Galway Kinnell . . . and Morton Marcus. Then as now, his work places him in a rarefied group of our very best poets.”

In the photo: Morton Marcus with fellow poets Robert Sward and Gary Young.

Gary Young was presented the Shelley Memorial Award by the Poetry Society of America at the Society’s 99th Annual Awards Ceremony, held at the National Arts Club’s Grand Ballroom in Manhattan. Alice Quinn, Executive Director of the Poetry Society of America, hosted the event. Gary’s youngest son, Cooper, joined him for the festivities.

by Alison Flood

The Poetry Society of America (PSA) has placed US prose poet Gary Young in the company of such luminaries as Elizabeth Bishop and EE Cummings after naming him the recipient of its prestigious Shelley Memorial award.

Established in 1929, with Conrad Aiken the first winner, the $3,500 (£2,500) award is given annually to a living American poet “selected with reference to genius and need.” Previous winners include Cummings, Bishop, Gary Snyder and Robert Creeley.

Young, a lecturer at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said it was “incredibly humbling to be in their company.” “It’s always gratifying whenever one’s work is recognised and valued, but to receive the Shelley award is particularly satisfying,” he added. “Two of my dear friends and mentors, men with whom I studied as a young man — William Everson at UC Santa Cruz, and James McMichael at UC Irvine — also won the Shelley award.”

Young’s most recent collection, Pleasure, looks at “moments of huddled comfort”, the ”sensuality of food, flowers, and everyday life”, finding that pleasure is not transient, but enduring and necessary. “It’s a joy to be subtracted from the world,” he writes in a poem from the collection. “Holding my son’s naked body against my own, all I feel is what he is. I cannot feel my own skin. I cannot feel myself touching him, but I can recognize his hair, the heft of his body, his warmth, his weight . . . I have become such a fine thing, the resting-place for a body I can know.”

His other works include Braver Deeds, an exploration of violence, Hands, Days, The Dream of a Moral Life and No Other Life which have won him numerous awards including the PSA’s William Carlos Williams award.

“I’m never smarter than I am when I’m writing a poem,” he once said in an interview. “The seductiveness of that intelligence — which seems to exist outside and independent of my own limited intellectual capacity — is best played out in my own mind by simple declaration. I don’t think poems should be puzzles — the world is puzzling enough. I want my poems to be windows: as clear as possible.”

by Scott Rappaport

UC Santa Cruz humanities lecturer Gary Young has been honored with the 2009 Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America.

The prestigious national award is given annually to “a living American poet selected with reference to genius and need.”

Previous winners of the award include Gary Snyder, e.e. cummings, Kenneth Rexroth, Kenneth Patchen, Elizabeth Bishop, and Robert Creeley.

“The list of past winners includes so many luminaries of American poetry; it’s a thrill, and incredibly humbling to be in their company,” said Young, who teaches poetry as a lecturer in creative writing at UC Santa Cruz.

“The Shelley Memorial Award is one of the most significant awards in poetry,” noted Micah Perks, associate professor of literature and co-director of the UC Santa Cruz creative writing program.

“The Poetry Society of America seems to be prescient about whose work will continue to be important,” she added. “Gary Young is in most excellent company.”

Young’s books include Pleasure, Hands, The Dream of a Moral Life (winner of the James D. Phelan Award), Days, Braver Deeds (winner of the Peregrine Smith Poetry Prize), and No Other Life (winner of the Poetry Society of America’s William Carlos Williams Award for best book of the year published by a university, literary or independent press).

Young has also received a Pushcart Prize.

Since 1975, Young has designed, illustrated, and printed limited edition books and broadsides at his Greenhouse Review Press. His print work is represented in many collections, including the Museum of Modern Art and the Getty Center for the Arts.

Young graduated from UC Santa Cruz in 1973 and received his M.F.A. from UC Irvine in 1975.

“It’s always gratifying whenever one’s work is recognized and valued, but to receive the Shelley Award is particularly satisfying,” said Young. “Two of my dear friends and mentors, men with whom I studied as a young man — William Everson at UC Santa Cruz, and James McMichael at UC Irvine — also won the Shelley award.”

As Young once said in an interview: “I’m never smarter than I am when I’m writing a poem. The seductiveness
of that intelligence — which seems to exist outside and independent of my own limited intellectual capacity —
is best played out in my own mind by simple declaration.
I don’t think poems should be puzzles — the world
is puzzling enough. I want my poems to be windows:
as clear as possible.”