ELLINWOOD —The Ellinwood Community Library will host an event with Wyatt Townley, Poet Laureate of Kansas on April 11 at 1:45 p.m. at the Ellinwood School/Community Library, 210 N. Schiller Ave. Members of the community are invited to attend the free program.
“The notion of ‘home’ is a long-held Kansas value, and I’d like to start a conversation around the state about coming home to poetry,” said Townley. “Poetry is a place we can return to in all kinds of weather, with its innate power to heal and comfort, transform and inspire. Its porch light is always on.”
Wyatt Townley is a widely published, nationally known poet and a fourth-generation Kansan. Her work has been featured on National Public Radio’s “The Writer’s Almanac” with Garrison Keillor, in US Poet Laureate Emeritus Ted Kooser’s “American Life in Poetry” column, and published in journals ranging from “The Paris Review” to

“Newsweek.” She has published three collections of poetry: “The Breathing Field” (Little Brown), “Perfectly Normal” (The Smith), and “The Afterlives of Trees” (Woodley Press), a Kansas Notable Book and winner of the Nelson Poetry Book Award.
A founding board member of The Writers Place in Kansas City, Mo., Townley has served as a teaching artist with Young Audiences and Writers in the Schools program, and has appeared at writers’ conferences and literary festivals in the Midwest and Northeast.
The Poet Laureate of Kansas is a program made possible by the Kansas Humanities Council, a 501c3 nonprofit organization that promotes the humanities as a public resource for all Kansans.
Townley explores the humanities through public readings, presentations, and discussions about poetry in communities across the state.
The program is made possible by the Kansas Humanities Council. The Kansas Humanities Council conducts and supports community-based programs, serves as a financial resource through an active grant-making program, and encourages Kansans to engage in the civic and cultural life of their communities.  For more information about KHC programs contact the Kansas Humanities Council at 785-357-0359.
For more information about Wyatt Townley’s visit or program in Ellinwood, contact the Ellinwood School/ Community Library at (620) 564-2306.