CSU alumnus George Kalamaras has been selected Poet Laureate of Indiana. Kalamaras received a MA in Creative Writing: Poetry at CSU in 1982. Kalamaras is currently a professor of English at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne, where he has taught since 1990. He has published six books of poetry and one of scholarship, many articles in scholarly journals, and more than 725 poems in anthologies and magazines. He has received numerous honors, including the Four Way Books Award for Theory and Function of Mangoes, grants and fellowships. Kalamaras will serve as Indiana Poet Laureate for a two year term.

Kalamaras says, “I am deeply honored with this appointment and absolutely thrilled to serve the people and state of Indiana in this way…The vocation of poetry is not about individual accolades, although I am humbled and most pleased with this honor. However, I see poetry as an act of loving service – to people, to animals and the planet, and to the culture at large. Poetry grants us the opportunity to practice a meaning-making activity in which the smaller sense of self eventually dissolves into a more expansive Self with a larger sense of purpose beyond the individual.”

To hear Kalamaras describe the appointment and talk about poetry, listen to this short interview from Northeast Indiana Public Radio, http://nipr.fm/post/interview-indianas-new-poet-laureate-expression-and-connection-through-verse.