Robert Creeley 1926 - 2005

Robert Creeley lived in West Acton from ages 4 to 15 and always considered it home. Robert said that he "learned to read" at Acton Memorial Library.

Through the Black Mountain Review and his own critical writings, Creeley helped to define a counter-tradition to the literary establishment. He published more than sixty books of poetry in the United States and abroad and more than a dozen books of prose, essays and interviews. He also edited Charles Olson's Selected Poems (1993), The Essential Burns (1989), and Whitman: Selected Poems (1973). Creeley’s many honors include the Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award, the Bollingen Prize, the Frost Medal, the Shelley Memorial Award, a National Endowment for the Arts grant, a Rockefeller Foundation grant, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation. He served as New York State Poet Laureate from 1989 to 1991 and spent many years as the Samuel P. Capen Professor of Poetry and Humanities at SUNY, Buffalo. He also taught at Brown University. Robert Creeley was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 1999.

Robert Creeley Foundation, Inc.

c/o Acton Memorial Library, 486 Main St., Acton, MA 01720

A non-profit 503(c)(3) organization honoring Robert Creeley, who grew up in Acton, and dedicated to promoting the appreciation of poetry through the presentation of readings by major poets, sponsorship of their visits to the Acton Boxborough Regional High School, hosting of a student poetry competition in the Acton Boxborough Regional High School and high schools in other Massachusetts towns, and sponsorship of the ABRHS broadside project, a collaborative effort between students studying art and literature.