Ted LINES

If you leave the house just once to celebrate National Poetry Month — as opposed to reclining with your usual cruel April stack of volumes — go to Lawrence today. As part of the University of Kansas Libraries’ poetry-month program, Ted Kooser, a Pulitzer Prize winner and former U.S. poet laureate, reads at 7 p.m. at the campus’s new boutique hotel, the Oread (1200 Oread). The poet and University of Nebraska-Lincoln English professor, who turns 71 this month, has been especially productive the past five years, publishing a career-spanning collection of his fencepost-sturdy poems and several smaller works. Among the latter is Lights on a Ground of Darkness, an evocative, lyrical memoir of Kooser’s Midwestern childhood. See lib.ku.edu to reserve a place at the event.

Mon., April 12, 7 p.m., 2010