Connecticut Poetry Circuit poet Kim Bridgford to come home to Fairfield University to do a reading on Nov. 12 | Press Releases

It will be a homecoming of sorts when the 2007 Connecticut Poetry Circuit Poet stops at Fairfield University to read from her latest collection of poems, "In the Extreme: Sonnets about World Records," for which she received the 2007 Donald Justice Poetry Award from the West Chester University Poetry Center in Pennsylvania. A professor of English at Fairfield University, Kim Bridgford, Ph.D., has been touring the state and her schedule brings her home to Fairfield on Monday, Nov. 12 at 7 p.m., in the DiMenna-Nyselius Library Multimedia Room. The public is welcome to attend.

Each year the The Connecticut Poetry Circuit selects an outstanding poet to give readings throughout the state and meet with college-age poets. Poets who have traveled in this series have included Robert Pinsky, X. J. Kennedy, and Mark Jarman.

So far Dr. Bridgford has visited the University of Hartford, Wesleyan University, Tunxis Community College, Middlesex Community College, Western Connecticut State University and Trinity College. Known for her lively, passionate readings, Dr. Bridgford will recite poems and try to demystify the art of writing poetry.

Her accomplishments laid the groundwork for being selected touring poet, according to the Poetry Circuit. The recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Connecticut Commission on the Arts, she's the author of three books of poetry, Undone (David Robert Books, 2003), nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, Instead of Maps , (David Robert Books, 2005) nominated for the Poets' Prize, and the recently published, In the Extreme: Sonnets about World Records , (Contemporary Poetry Review Press, 2007).

Dr. Bridgford earned a Ph. D. from the University of Illinois and an M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, the first graduate program in creative writing. It counts among its alumni, Jane Smiley, Philip Roth, and Tracy Kidder. She and Michael C. White, Ph. D., author and professor of English at Fairfield, are editors of Dogwood , Fairfield's journal of poetry and prose, and she is the editor of the online women's magazine, "Mezzo Cammin." Her docket is also busy writing Take-Out: Sonnets about Fortune Cookies , and she's working on a three-book project with Kathryn Jo Yarrington, professor of Visual and Performing Arts at Fairfield, featuring photographs and sonnets based on Iceland, Venezuela and Bhutan.