06-32
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 28, 2006
Contact: Christine A. Somosi
www.jcu.edu

John Carroll University Professor Dr. George Bilgere
Wins National Poetry Award

Cleveland, OH – George Bilgere, award-winning poet and John Carroll University English Professor, has been chosen as the winner of the 2006 May Swenson Poetry Award. Bilgere's manuscript, Haywire, was selected by judge Edward Field from among 600 entrants from across the United States. Bilgere will receive a $1,000 prize, and Haywire will be published by the Utah State University Press in the summer of 2006.

The May Swenson Award, now in its 10th year, honors May Swenson as one of America's most provocative and vital writers. During her long career, Swenson was praised by writers from virtually every major school of poetry.

Bilgere's most recent book of poetry, The Good Kiss, was chosen by U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins to win the University of Akron's Poetry Prize in 2001. Collins said of The Good Kiss, "In the house of American poetry, this book is a welcome breath of fresh air." Bilgere's other books include Big Bang (Copper Beech Press) and The Going (University of Missouri), which received both the Devins Award in Poetry and the Society of Midland Authors Award.

In the past two years, Bilgere has given readings of his poetry at the Library of Congress with U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser, and at the 92nd Street Y in New York with Billy Collins. He has received grants in poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ohio Arts Council, and the Witter Bynner Foundation. He is the 2003 winner of the Cleveland Arts Prize. His poems have appeared in Best American Poetry, Ploughshares, Poetry, The Kenyon Review, Sewanee Review, and many other journals and anthologies. He directs the Writing Program and the Visiting Writers Series at John Carroll, and is the host of Wordplay, Cleveland's only spoken-word radio show.

George Bilgere has been a television actor in Japan, and a Fulbright Scholar in Spain. He has taught at the University of Denver and the University of Oklahoma. He has given poetry readings and workshops at schools and conferences around the country, including the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the Sewanee Writers' Conference, and the Antioch Writers' Conference.

John Carroll University, located in Cleveland, Ohio, is a liberal arts university grounded in the Jesuit, Catholic tradition. The university has some 3,350 plus undergraduates and just over 750 graduate students. The U.S. News & World Report's 2006 annual college guide ranks John Carroll University among the top 10 master's-degree granting universities in the Midwest and first in average graduation rate. Originally founded as St. Ignatius College in 1886, the university was renamed in 1923 to honor America's first Catholic bishop, John Carroll of Maryland. John Carroll is one of 28 Jesuit colleges and universities located in the United States.

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