BARKS LECTURE IS THURSDAY IN M.G.B.

Coleman Barks, poet and professor emeritus of English at the University of Georgia, will be the first lecturer of the 2004-05 President's Lecture Series at Old Dominion University Thursday, Sept 16. His talk, "Rumi's Work with Community," will be at 7:30 p.m. in the Mills Godwin Jr. Life Sciences Building. It is free and open to the public.

Barks has spent 28 years collaborating with various Persian scholars to translate the poetry of the 13th-century mystic Jelaluddin Rumi. His work has cumulated into 18 volumes, resulting in a best-selling work, "Essential Rumi." Barks has also appeared in two hourlong Bill Moyers' specials on PBS and had his work included in the seventh edition of "The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces."

A Morehead Scholar at the University of North Carolina, Barks taught poetry and creative writing for 34 years at various universities. Now retired, he received professor emeritus of English honors from the University of Georgia. Barks has published six volumes of his own poetry, along with his Rumi translations, which have sold more than half a million copies worldwide.

He is a recipient of numerous awards, including the first Guy Owen Poetry Prize from "Southern Poetry Review," the Pushcart Writer's Choice Award and the New England Review/Bread Loaf Quarterly Narrative Poem Prize. Recently Barks received the Juliet Hollister Award for his work in interfaith dialogue.

For more information call 683-3114.