About George Bilgere
George Bilgere is the 2006 winner of the May Swenson Poetry Award for his book of poems, Haywire, chosen by judge Ed Field and now available from Utah State University Press.
In 2002, U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins selected his collection, The Good Kiss, to win the University of Akron Poetry Award. “In the house of contemporary poetry,” said Collins, “The Good Kiss is a breath of fresh, American air.” Bilgere’s other books include Big Bang (1999) and The Going, winner of the 1995 Devins Award and the Society of Midland Authors Award.
In the fall of 2006, poems from Haywire and The Good Kiss were read by Garrison Keillor on eight broadcasts of his daily poetry show, The Writer’s Almanac, carried by 370 NPR affiliates around the country.
In October of 2006 he was awarded the Helen and Laura Krout Memorial Ohioana Poetry Award, given to a poet who has produced a significant body of work and whose efforts have contributed to poetry in Ohio.
George Bilgere has received grants and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fulbright Commission, and the Witter Bynner Foundation through the Library of Congress. He is the 2003 winner of the Cleveland Arts Prize in Literature, and received a 2007 Ohio Arts Council grant in poetry.
His poems have appeared in Poetry, Ploughshares, The Kenyon Review, The Sewanee Review, The Georgia Review, Fulcrum, The Southern Review, Best American Poetry, and elsewhere. His work has been reprinted in numerous anthologies, including 180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Every Day, The Autumn House Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, and Poetry magazine’s ninetieth anniversary anthology.
He has given poetry readings at venues around the country, including the 92nd Street Y in New York with Billy Collins and the Library of Congress with Poet Laureate Ted Kooser.
Bilgere received his Ph.D. from Denver University. He has worked on public television in Japan, and has taught at the University of Oklahoma and in Bilbao, Spain, as a Fulbright Fellow. He teaches contemporary literature at John Carroll University in Cleveland, and is the host of the spoken-word radio show, WORDPLAY.
Contact George Bilgere
If you would like George to read at your upcoming event, please contact him:
George Bilgere
English Department
John Carroll University
University Heights, OH 44118
(216) 397 4746
gbilgere@jcu.edu
