The poet David Budbill will visit Sterling on Thursday, February 16th, to read from his recent collection “Happy Life” as well as from earlier works.

Budbill lives not far from Sterling College, on the slopes of a mountain near Bear Swamp, where just last week students enrolled in Winter Ecology were tramping through snowdrifts and counting over-wintering birds. His work, influenced by the traditions of ancient Chinese mountain poets, celebrates the simple joys of living close to the land, with a wry and sometimes wistful self-awareness.

Among David Budbill’s prizes and honors are: a National Endowment for the Arts Play Writing Fellowship in 1991, a Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry in 1981 and The Dorothy Canfield Fisher Award for Fiction in 1978. In 2002 the Vermont Arts Council gave David the Walter Cerf Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts.

The Los Angeles Daily News says that Budbill writes “with rare honesty, affection and grace—and with language so precise and descriptive you will know immediately you’re soul-deep in something extraordinary.”

All are welcome to attend this free reading, and we are hoping for a big turn-out! Please join us at 6:30 pm on the 16th, in Simpson Hall.

Photo credit: Enid Yu