Poet Claire Bateman will read from her works Monday, March 12 at 7:30 pm in The Showroom at Hub-Bub. This reading is part of the Hub City Writers Project’s Spring 2007 Reading Series. Claire Bateman, author of five books of poetry, is a recipient of the Louisiana Literature Poetry Prize, a Robert Frost Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize and a National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship.

Her books include The Bicycle Slow Race (Wesleyan, '91); Friction (Eighth Mountain, '98); At the Funeral of the Ether (Ninety-Six Press, '98); Clumsy (New Issues, 2003); and Leap (New Issues, 2005). Claire teaches writing at the Fine Arts Center in Greenville, SC, a school for literary, performing and visual artists who are high school students.

"I say Claire Bateman is weirder, deeper-weirdeeper-and in that way better than the poets some say are so damned good," says poet Mark Halliday. "Those poets just make me go ‘Huh?' and ‘Oh, sure,' whereas Bateman makes me go ‘Sheesh!' and ‘Holy espresso!'

The Showroom is located at 149 S. Daniel Morgan Avenue, behind the Herald-Journal Building in downtown Spartanburg. Our entrance is in the back.