Come visit the HeART Gallery in Toledo for an Ohio Humanities’ Speakers Bureau event with David Baker!

David has lived in Ohio for more than thirty years, and his poetry springs directly out of his life and experiences here. These poems illuminate our villages and farms—from Lake Erie to the Ohio River—our big-city gardens, small-town neighborhoods, and family life. David is also one of the country’s leading eco-poets, devoted to the natural world—the woods, the fields, the backyards and creeks of our state, all the rich flora and fauna that live among us. Drawn from his eleven books of poems, David’s poetry readings are lively and warm. He’s eager to read his work and talk with you about the art of poetry, its important place in our lives and imaginations. See why Marilyn Hacker writes that David Baker “is the most expansive and moving poet to come out of the American Midwest since James Wright.”

David Baker is author of twelve books of poetry, including Swift: New and Selected Poems (W. W. Norton, 2019), which gathers work from all his books and includes significant new poems.  His Never-Ending Birds (Norton) won the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Award in 2011.  His six books of prose include Show Me Your Environment: Essays on Poetry, Poets, and Poems (Michigan, 2014). Among his awards are prizes and grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Mellon Foundation, and Society of Midland Authors. He holds the Thomas B. Fordham Chair at Denison University, in Granville, Ohio, and is Poetry Editor of The Kenyon Review.

Curious about our Speakers Bureau? Check out speakers and topics here.

Want to see other Ohio Humanities events? Check out our calendar!