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Alumnus Carl Phillips, celebrated American poet and professor emeritus of English at Washington University in St. Louis, will deliver the annual David F. Grose Memorial Lecture in Classics Tuesday, April 7 at 4:30 p.m. in the Amherst Room on the 10th floor of the Campus Center. The event is free and open to the public and will be followed by a reception.

Phillips earned his Master of Arts in Teaching in the Latin and Classical Humanities program at UMass Amherst. Among his 17 books of poetry are “Silverchest,” a finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize, and “Double Shadow,” winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His collection, “Then the War: And Selected Poems 2007-2020,” won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

He has received numerous fellowships, including from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Library of Congress, and was the recipient of the 2021 Jackson Prize, the Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry, the Kingsley Tufts Award, a Lambda Literary Award and the PEN/USA Award for Poetry.

“We are thrilled to welcome Carl Phillips back to campus during National Poetry Month,” says Lauren Caldwell, chair of the Department of Classics. “Carl studied with David Grose, for whom the memorial lecture is named, in the 1980s, which makes his visit very special.”

Sponsors of the event in the College of Humanities and Fine Arts include the Department of Classics, the Department of English and the Program in Comparative Literature in the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures.

More information about the Grose Memorial Lecture can be found on the Department of Classics website.