By Susanne Reynolds

Acclaimed poet Noah Blaustein will visit Bainbridge State College on Tuesday, April 14, at 4:30 p.m., in which Blaustein will hold a craft lecture and workshop for aspiring writers. A reading from his work will begin at 6 p.m., followed by a book signing. Both events, as well as a reception with light refreshments, will be held in the Charles H. Kirbo Center Solarium on campus and are free and open to the public.

Blaustein has published poems in the Los Angeles Review, Massachusetts Review, Mid-American Review, Harvard Review, Barrow Street, The Fish Anthology, Pleiades, and other top-notch literary journals. His first book, Flirt, was selected by Hilda Ras and Kevin Prufer for the 2013 Mary Burritt Christiansen poetry series edited by Hilda Ras for the University of New Mexico. In 2001, Blaustein edited the anthology Motion: American Sports Poems, a collection that includes poems by Carl Sandburg, Randall Jarrell, Carolyn Kizer, Agha Shahid Ali and Raymond Carver, among many others. He lives in Santa Monica, Calif., with his wife and children.

“When we flirt, we use the language with delight, our words light up, and the cadences of our speech are governed by desire-which fuels Noah Blaustein’s long-awaited debut volume of poems,” fellow poet Christopher Merrill wrote. “Like all great lovers, he promises the world—and then delivers, in poems that employ a range of forms to address the central issue of the heart: how we flirt before we think-and how we then discern order in the new dispensation in which we find ourselves.”

The event is the last of the 2014-15 academic year in the Georgia Poetry Circuit (GPC), which brings poets of national reputation to audiences in Georgia. GPC has been underwritten for the last two years at Bainbridge State College by the annual Carter Arts & Lecture Series. Charles Hanzlicek (The Lives of Birds) visited BSC in November; and American-Iranian poet, translator and editor Sholeh Wolpé preceded Blaustein in February. The third season of Georgia Poetry Circuit readings for the academic year 2015-16 will resume this coming fall.