Join us for Poets in the Conversation Room!

Cosponsored with Grace Cavalieri, Maryland’s lOth Poet Laureate, Kymberly Taylor, Editor-in-Chief of Annapolis Home Magazine, and St. John’s College. Made possible by The Rowsome Family memorializing St John's Tutor, Nancy Buchanauer and The Maryland State Arts Council.

About George Bilgere

Former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins has called George Bilgere’s work “a welcome breath of fresh, contemporary air in the house of American poetry.” Bilgere has read his poems at the Library of Congress, the 92nd Street Y in New York, the Chautauqua Institute, and the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC. NPR listeners know him from his many appearances on Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac and A Prairie Home Companion. He has received grants and awards from the Pushcart Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Fulbright Foundation. He is a recipient of the May Swenson Poetry Award, the Society of Midland Authors Poetry Prize, the Ohioana Poetry Award, and the Cleveland Arts Prize. His work received the Editor’s Choice Award from the New Ohio Review in 2022, and in 2023 he won the Reader’s Choice Award from Rattle. His eighth collection of poetry, Central Air, was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in March, 2022. His new book, Cheap Motels of My Youth, won the Rattle Chapbook Prize in 2023 and appeared in 2024. He lives in Cleveland, Ohio with his wife and two very fine little boys.

About the Poets in the Conversation Room Series

In partnership with Annapolis Home Magazine, St. John’s College presents a series called Poets in the Conversation Room hosted by renowned poet, author, playwright, and tenth Maryland Poet Laureate Grace Cavalieri.

“Annapolis needs poetry,” says Kymberly Taylor, poet and Editor-In-Chief of Annapolis Home Magazine. “It needs this incredible art form that helps us feel things beyond what we hear and read online, on television, and in the news.”

“There couldn’t be a more fitting partnership for the college than Poets in the Conversation Room,” says St. John’s College President Nora Demleitner. “At the college, students spend four years reading and discussing great classical poets – from Homer to Baudelaire. This is a wonderful opportunity to expose them to more modern poetry while also welcoming and engaging the Annapolis community.”

The poetry series is free and open to the public. Seating is available on a first-come, first-served basis. Works by the featured poets will be on display at the St. John’s College Greenfield Library and available to purchase at the St. John’s College Bookstore.

“I think it’s going to create a tremendous audience because it’s also entertaining,” says Cavalieri. “Poetry speaks to how we feel and how it is to be alive in this world—and who does not want to hear that?”

*Please note, registration is for estimating attendance; tickets are not required.