The University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop will host a free reading by poet Michael Palmer at 8 p.m. Friday, Feb. 15, in the Frank Conroy Reading Room of the Glenn Schaeffer Library, adjacent to the Dey House.

Palmer attended Harvard University, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts in French and a Master of Arts in comparative literature. He has worked extensively with contemporary dance for more than 30 years and has collaborated with many composers and visual artists. He is the 2006 recipient of the Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets, a $100,000 prize that recognizes outstanding and proven mastery in the art of poetry.

Palmer is the author of 10 books of poetry, including Company of Moths (shortlisted for the 2006 Canadian Griffin Poetry Prize), Codes Appearing: Poems 1979-1988, The Promises of Glass, The Lion Bridge: Selected Poems 1972-1995, At Passages, Sun, First Figure, Notes for Echo Lake, Without Music, The Circular Gates, and Blake's Newton.

Besides the 2006 Wallace Stevens Award, Palmer's honors include two grants from the Literature Program of the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1989-90 he was a Guggenheim Fellow. During the years 1992–1994 he held a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund Writer's Award. From 1999 to 2004, he served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. In the spring of 2001 he received the Shelly Memorial Prize from the Poetry Society of America.

The Iowa Writers’ Workshop is a graduate program in the University of Iowa College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. For a UI arts calendar and details about upcoming events visit the new Arts Iowa website.