Poet Bin Ramke to read for Writing Program Reading Series Sept. 29

Poet Bin Ramke will read from his work at 8 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 29, for the Writing Program Reading Series at Washington University in St. Louis.

The reading is free and open to the public and takes place in Hurst Lounge, located on the second floor of Duncker Hall, in the northwest corner of Brookings Quadrangle, near the intersection of Hoyt and Brookings drives. For more information, call (314) 935-7130.

Ramke is the author of eight books of poems, including Matter (2004), Airs, Waters, Places (2001), Wake (1999), Massacre of the Innocents (1995), The Erotic Light of Gardens (1989), The Language Student (1986) and White Monkeys (1981). His first book, The Difference Between Night and Day, won the Yale Younger Poets Award in 1978.

Born in east Texas, Ramke spent much of his youth in south Louisiana among his Cajun relatives, including several summers on a houseboat on the Mississippi River in Baton Rouge. He studied mathematics one summer at the University of Texas with R.L. Moore, inventor of point-set topology, and for a time worked with the sculptor Armin Scheler while a student at Louisiana State University.

Ramke currently teaches literature and writing at the University of Denver and edits Denver Quarterly. He previously taught at the Art Institute of Chicago, Wichita State University, the University of Georgia and Columbus College (Ga.). He has edited the Contemporary Poetry Series for University of Georgia Press since 1984.

Ramke holds a master’s degree from the University of New Orleans and a doctorate from Ohio University.