Celebrated Teacher And Poet, David Lee, To Read In Cedar City For National Poetry Month

Sugar House Press is pleased to host poet David Lee for a reading of his work at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, April 27. Lee, who taught at Southern Utah University for more than thirty years, is celebrating the release of recent books, including Rusty Barbed Wire: Selected Poems. This event, hosted at the Southern Utah Museum of Art, is free and the public is invited. A Q&A forum and book signing will follow the reading, which is made possible by partnerships with the Cedar City Arts Council, Utah Humanities, Artisans Art Gallery, the Southern Utah Museum of Art, and SUU. Lee will be welcomed and introduced by SUU’s interim president, Mindy Benson. Don’t miss this chance to hear this homecoming of an iconic voice of the American west.

Rusty Barbed Wire collects Lee’s finest poems, composed over several decades, into one volume. Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, author of Hush and Even Now, notes its significance: “At last, a collection that gathers Lee’s best poems and allows us to read how, through his evolution, every poem has been an invitation to meet our humanity, to lean into the essential work of grief and love.” Copies of two other recent Lee Books, Mine Tailings (published by Three Sisters Press in Boulder, Utah), and the chapbook Allegory of Perfection, illustrated by Cedar City Artist Whitney Staheli (published by Sugar House Press), will also be available.

David Lee was Utah’s first poet laureate; in 2001 he was finalist-runner-up for United States Poet Laureate. He is the author of two dozen volumes of poetry, including The Porcine Canticles, A Legacy of Shadows, So Quietly the Earth, and Last Call. Lee is a former seminary student, semi-pro baseball player, and hog farmer. He has a PhD with a focus in John Milton, and he received every teaching award given by SUU in his three decades as an educator. His awards include multiple fellowships from the NEA and NEH, Western States Book Award, Mountain and Plains States Booksellers Awards, Critics Choice Award, Utah Book Awards, Elkhorn Poetry Prize, Evolutionary Poem of the Year, Utah Governor’s Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts, Utah Governor’s Merit Award in the Humanities, and an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters. Utah Humanities and thea Utah Education Association named him one of the top-12 writers in state history and he was the fifth academic in Utah to be named a Lifetime Fellow by the Utah Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retired, he scribbles and wanders rural roads and byways, all at about the same pace, and maintains an intense training schedule to achieve his goal of becoming a World Class Piddler. He resides in Seaside, Oregon.

Founded in 2009, Sugar House Press is an independent, 501(c)(3) nonprofit poetry publisher based out of Utah. Our mission is to promote an eclectic range of poets through publishing and live events to build nationally connected literary communities while fostering the literary arts in Utah.

The Cedar City Arts Council fosters a thriving arts community in Iron County through advocacy, appreciation, education, and support. It has been awarding mini-grants to Iron County residents and organizations since 2008; and as of 2021, it has given more than $63,000 to community-building projects such as this. Its accepts applications for mini grants semiannually, with deadlines at the end of February and August.

WHAT: David Lee reading, Q&A, book signing
WHEN: 6:30 p.m., Wednesday, April 27
WERE: The Southern Utah Museum of Art, 351 W. Center St., Cedar City
COST: Free, the public is invited to attend