First Lady Patricia Blagojevich joins Illinois Poet Laureate Kevin Stein to announce the release of the first-ever audio CD poetry anthology, "Bread & Steel: Illinois Poets Reading from Their Works"

CHICAGO - First Lady Patricia Blagojevich today joined Illinois Poet Laureate Kevin Stein, to announce the release of the first-ever audio compact disk poetry anthology, Bread & Steel: Illinois Poets Reading from Their Works.  Bread and Steel features 24 Illinois poets reading from their works - including Dave Etter, Susan Hahn, Li-Young Lee, Haki Madhubuti, and Lisel Mueller - and reflects the cultural, aesthetic, and racial diversity of the state of Illinois.      

 

"Teachers and school libraries will find this audio CD an invaluable addition to their collection, and it will also help enhance the classroom experience for students who value hearing poetry as much as reading it," said the First Lady.  "Bread & Steel will have a positive impact on our youth, and help them develop critical thinking skills."   

 

Bread & Steel produced by Kevin Stein is composed of works of established poets and those just emerging in the art form.  The anthology takes the reader on a journey along the thoroughfares and back roads of Illinois' diverse poetic landscape.  Building on the popularity of audio and video poetry offerings on the Illinois Poet Laureate's Web site, Bread & Steel contributors read a representative selection from their works on this approximately 50-minute CD. These poets' characteristic tones and inflections add considerable depth to the listener's experience, delivering the intimacy of the poetry coffeehouse, to the library classroom, or living room.  Bread & Steel offers poems both accessible and appropriate to a range of ages.       

 

Kevin Stein is the Illinois Poet Laureate, serving in that office since his 2003 appointment by Gov. Blagojevich.  He is the author of seven books of poetry and literary criticism, including the collection American Ghost Roses (2005), winner of the Society of Midland Authors 2006 Poetry Award.  This volume as well as Chance Ransom (2000) and Bruised Paradise (1996) were published in the University of Illinois Press Poetry Series.  Stein's scholarly works include Private Poets, Worldly Acts (Ohio University Press, 1996), a study of poetry and history which earned recognition as an Amazon.com Recommended Book.  Along with poet G. E. Murray, he edited Illinois Voices (University of Illinois, 2001), the definitive anthology of twentieth-century Illinois poetry.

 

Stein's poems and essays have appeared widely in journals such as American Poetry Review, Boulevard, Colorado Review, The Kenyon Review, Poetry, The Southern Review, and TriQuarterly.  His honors include the National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship, the Frederick Bock Prize awarded by Poetry, the Indiana Review Poetry Prize, and the Devins Award for Poetry for the collection A Circus of Want (University of Missouri Press, 1992).  In 2004 he received the Vernon Louis Parrington Medal for Distinguished Writing.  Stein teaches at Bradley University, where he serves as Caterpillar Professor of English and directs the Creative Writing program.

 

Funds from the purchase of Bread & Steel will support innumerable ventures to promote Illinois poetry, most particularly the Poetry Now! project.  This project aims to create an audience for contemporary poetry in rural and urban locales not generally immersed in the current poetry scene.  Twenty Illinois libraries have received over $2,000 of Poetry Now! support, among them Watseka Public Library, Knox College Library, Columbia College Library, Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville Library, Wheaton North High School Library, and Kankakee Public Library.