Marvin Bell

Bell

In 2000, Governor Tom Vilsack named Bell Iowa's first poet laureate. In a response to the honor, Bell said, "For the state of Iowa to have decided to name a poet laureate ... is to reconfirm the idea that a person's life is worth trying to express ..."**

Born in New York City, he attended Alfred University in New York, Syracuse University, and the University of Chicago before enrolling at the University of Iowa. He attended the Writers' Workshop, receiving an M.F.A. degree in 1963. Bell later served as a visiting lecturer at the UI and eventually became a professor of English at the school. In 1986, he was named Flannery O'Connor Professor of Letters at the Writers' Workshop.

Among Bell's poetry collections are Stars Which See, Stars Which Do Not See (1978), These Green-Going-to-Yellow (1981), The Book of the Dead Man (1994), Night Works: Poems 1962-2000 (2000), the Lamont Award-winning A Probable Volume of Dreams (1969) and Mars Being Red (2007). He is also the creator of Old Snow Just Melting: Essays and Interviews (1983).

** As cited in: "Meet Iowa's Poet Laureate." Humanities Iowa. On-line. Internet. 13 Sept.2001.

www.uiowa.edu/~humiowa/marvinbellpl.htm

Author biography in part by Deanna Sue Thomann, The Iowa Literary Walk website

Iowa Writers' Workshop
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