Michael Spence

Michael Spence

Bus-driving poet to give reading today in Port Angeles

PORT ANGELES — Michael Spence, poet and longtime driver of urban transit buses, will arrive here for a public reading in the Little Theater at Peninsula College this afternoon as part of the Studium Generale lunch-time lecture series.

Admission is free to the 12:35 p.m. program in the theater, inside the Pirate Union Building on the main campus at 1502 E. Lauridsen Blvd.

Spence, who drove public buses in the Seattle area for some 30 years, composed his poems along the way.

He’s the author of five books, including Crush Depth, Adam Chooses and The Bus Driver’s Threnody, from which he’ll read today.

His 50-minute program is cosponsored by the college’s Foothills Writers Series.

This past January, Spence’s fifth book, Umbilical, soon to be released by St. Augustine’s Press, won The New Criterion Poetry Prize.

He’s also the winner of a 2014 Literary Fellowship from the Artist Trust of Washington state.

Besides his books, Spence publishes his work in many journals, from The New Criterion and Shenandoah to Tar River Poetry.

For more information about today’s presentation, contact Peninsula College professor Janet Lucas at jlucas@pencol.edu.

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