By Doug Holder

Somerville‚Äôs Ibbetson Street Press will be awarding former U.S. poet laureate Robert Pinsky the Ibbetson Street Press Lifetime Achievement Award at the Somerville News Writers Festival, Nov. 11, at 7 p.m. at the Dilboy VFW Hall, 371 Summer St. in Davis Square. The award, like the festival, is in its fifth year. It is awarded to individuals who have made substantial contributions to the poetry and or the small or alternative press world. Former recipients of the award have been Robert K. Johnson (poet and retired Suffolk University professor), Louisa Solano (former owner of the Grolier Poetry Book Shop), Jack Powers (founder of Stone Soup Poets), and David Godine (founder of David Godine publishing). Tickets for the Festival  are $15 and will be available at the door or by calling 617-666-4010.

Robert Pinsky was born on Oct. 20, 1940 in Long Branch, New Jersey. He received a B.A. from Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and earned both an M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy from Stanford University, where he was a Stegner Fellow in creative writing, and studied under the poet and critic Yvor Winters.

He is the author of several collections of both poetry and prose. He also released a computerized novel in 1985. About his work, the poet Louise Glück has said, “Robert Pinsky has what I think Shakespeare must have had: dexterity combined with worldliness, the magician’s dazzling quickness fused with subtle intelligence, a taste for tasks and assignments to which he devises ingenious solutions.”

From 1997 to 2000, he served as the United States Poet Laureate and Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. During that time, he founded the Favorite Poem Project, a program dedicated to celebrating, documenting and encouraging poetry’s role in Americans’ lives.

In 1999, he co-edited Americans’ Favorite Poems: The Favorite Poem Project Anthology with Maggie Dietz. Other anthologies he has edited include An Invitation to Poetry (W. W. Norton & Company, 2004); Poems to Read (2002); and Handbook of Heartbreak (1998).

His honors include an American Academy of Arts and Letters award, Poetry Magazine’s Oscar Blumenthal prize, the Poetry Society of America’s William Carlos Williams Award, and a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship. He is currently poetry editor of the weekly Internet magazine Slate.