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Somerville poet Bert Stern has been selected to be the next recipient of the Ibbetson Street Press Lifetime Achievement Award.

The award has been presented to such literary figures as Robert Pinsky, Frank Bidart, Afaa Michael Weaver, Harris Gardner , Gloria Mindock, Robert K. Johnson, Louisa Solano, David Godine, Sam Cornish, Jack Powers, to name a few.

The award will be presented during Poetry Month at a meeting of the Somerville Bagel Bards at the Au Bon Pain in Davis Square.

Poet Bert Stern

Born in Buffalo in 1930, Bert Stern is Milligan Professor of English Emeritus at Wabash College. He taught at the University of Thessaloniki from 1965-67 as Fulbright Professor of English and at Peking University as an exchange professor in 1984-5.

Stern published a pioneer study of Wallace Stevens in 1965 (Wallace Stevens, Art of Uncertainty, University of Michigan). He has published two poetry collections, Silk & the Ragpicker’s Grandson (Red Dust, NYC, 1998) and Steerage (Ibbetson Street, Somerville, MA, 2008).

His essays and poems have appeared in journals including Southern Review, Columbia Teacher’s College Record, Sewanee Review, The American Poetry Review, Poetry, and more than a dozen anthologies.

Stern co-founded and co-edited Off the Grid Press. Now retired, he continues to serve as advisor.