To welcome in National Poetry Month, award-winning poet and author Eric Paul Shaffer will read a selection of poems on the theme of “Finding Our Way Through the World With Words.” We all take paths, roads, highways, and trails, and even pass through places without any marked or familiar way at all on life’s journey. The reading will include contemporary and classic poems that feature the many ways we find and take through our days, or the ways that find us as we travel.

Eric Paul Shaffer’s seventh book of poetry Even Further West will be published by Unsolicited Press in Spring 2018. Previous books include A Million-Dollar Bill; Lāhaina Noon; Portable Planet; and Living at the Monastery, Working in the Kitchen. More than 450 of his poems have appeared in 250 reviews in the USA, Australia, Canada, England, Ireland, Japan, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Scotland, and Wales. Shaffer received Hawai‘i’s 2002 Elliot Cades Award for Literature, a 2006 Ka Palapala Po‘okela Book Award, and the 2009 James M. Vaughan Award for Poetry. Shaffer teaches composition, literature, and creative writing at Honolulu Community College. For more information, visit www.ericpaulshaffer.com.

This one-hour program is recommended for ages 12 and older. Program schedule is subject to change. Contact the library 10 days in advance to request a sign language interpreter or if other special accommodation is needed.