Next Thursday, the Poetry Institute will welcome poet Walter E. Butts to the Institute Library as part of a monthly reading series. In 2009, Butts was named poet laureate of New Hampshire, an honorific he’ll hold until 2014.
Butts’ published collections include Sunday Evening at the Stardust Café and Movies in a Small Town, and several chapbooks. His work has appeared in numerous literary journals.
Reached by telephone at his home in Manchester, N.H., Butts said he’s long maintained that “poetry is probably the literary form that’s closest an expression of the human condition.”
“Poetry,” Butts said, “is a way of engaging with language in a way that evokes feeling and implies meaning and brings the expression of thought to a different level. … Poetry is a way of placing ourselves in the world.”
As New Hampshire’s poet laureate, Butts sees himself “being an advocate for poetry and for poets in the state” and views the role as “an opportunity to bring poetry into the public awareness to whatever extent I might be able to do that.”
Butts will appear at the Institute Library, 847 Chapel St., on Thursday, August 18. Doors will open at 6:30 p.m. The reading, which will include an open-microphone opportunity, will begin at 7 p.m.