The West Virginia University Department of English will celebrate National Poetry Month Thursday, April 22, with a reading by a nationally acclaimed poet.

The reading by Terrance Hayes will begin at 7:30 p.m. in the Mountainlair Gold Ballroom. Hayes is the author ofHip Logic,a National Poetry Series Selection.

Terrance Hayes is one of the most adventurous and generous poets of his generation,said James Harms, director of the creative writing program in WVU ’s Department of English.Time and again his poems shock you out of your chair with their verbal ingenuity, then plant you right in the earth with their empathic humanity. He’s truly one of a kind.

Hayes’debut collection,Muscular Music,won a 1999 Whiting Writers award and the 2000 Kate Tufts Discovery Award. His work has been included in various anthologies of emerging writers, includingAmerican Poetry: The Next GenerationandStep Into a World: A Global Anthology of the New Black Literature.

The Los Angeles Times has compared Hayes’range tothat of a bold virtuoso and a fearless chronicler of character: Big Bird, Paul Robeson and Balthus all sound off in these relevatory poems. Whether hip or Horatian, the imaginative logic in these poems is irrefutable.

A South Carolina native, Hayes is an assistant professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University. He lives in Pittsburgh with his wife, poet Yona Harvey, and their daughter, Ua Pilar.

A reception and book signing will follow the reading, which is free and open to the public. For more information, call 293-3107 ext. 404.