Joe Milford Hosts Dara Wier

The Harvard Review has said "Recalling at moments the philosophical comedy of Wallace Stevens and Wislawa Szymborska, many of Wier's colloquial stanzas draw a reader away from a recognizable world into one in which women waltz with bears, houseflies chat with colonels, and the absence of sound makes a material presence." Her work has been included in recent volumes of Best American Poetry and The Pushcart Prize Anthology. The American Poetry Review awarded her the Jerome Shestack Prize in 2001. She received a Pushcart prize in 2002, and has received grants from the Guggenheim Foundation and the NEA. She directs the MFA Program for Poets and Writers at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, and along with Noy Holland and Lisa Olstein co-directs the University of Massachusetts' Juniper Initiative for Literary Arts and Action.