"Thomas McGrath: You Can Start the Poetry Now!" has been published in English by Presses Universitaires de la Mediteranee, part of a series of profiles of acclaimed American authors.
Edited by Pamela Sund and Vincent Dussol, the book is part of the Profiles of American Authors series by Presses Universitaires de la Mediteranee, which is associated with the Universite Paul-Valery in Montpellier, France.
The 2011 book on McGrath, a North Dakota poet, is part of a series that features authors such as Henry David Thoreau, Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson, Saul Bellow and Raymond Carver, among others. "Thomas McGrath: You Can Start the Poetry Now!" includes critical analysis, memoir, interviews, and a biography of McGrath's early life, a news release said.
A book reading has been set for 2 p.m. Oct. 30 at Zandbroz Variety, 420 Main St., Fargo. The collection is available at Zandbroz or through the PULM website, www.PULM.fr/.
Sund, one of the editors of the book, is a long-time friend and student of McGrath and an art critic, educator, and painter who lives in Fargo. Dussol, also an editor, is a French McGrath scholar, professor, and writer who lives in Montpellier, France.
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"Tom (McGrath) is, by far, North Dakota's finest and most accomplished writer, according to the great national and international writers who champion his work," Sund said in a news release.
"Thomas McGrath: You Can Start the Poetry Now!" includes writings by Robert Bly, Studs Terkel, Linda McCarriston and Sterling Plumpp, as well as regional writers such as Larry Woiwode, Dale Jacobson and Mark Vinz.
PULM at the University of Montpellier in France publishes one book a year on an American author in English. This year, the McGrath book was chosen.
Contributors to the collection are Studs Terkel, Robert Bly, Larry Woiwode, Dale Jacobson, Mark Vinz, Reginald Gibbons, Michael Anania, Alice McGrath, Linda McCarriston, David Pink, Sterling Plumpp, Lewis Lubka, Rick Watson, Jack Beeching, Sergio Ramirez, Claribel Alegria, David Martinson, Vincent Dussol and Pamela Sund.
For more than 50 years, McGrath created poems based largely on the themes of love, work, and political justice. His North Dakota childhood figures prominently in his book-length work "Letter to an Imaginary Friend." His awards include the Amy Lowell Traveling Poetry Fellowship, the Bush Foundation Fellowship, the Lenore Marshall/Nation Prize, a Guggenheim fellowship, two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, and more.
He was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University and was honored with a Doctorate of Letters from the UND in 1981. McGrath was born on a farm near Sheldon, N.D., in 1916 and died in Minneapolis in 1990.
