Poet, Novelist Delivers Speech

Winner of the 1992 Booker Prize for The English Patient, poet and novelist Michael Ondaatje, delivered the fall Morris Gray Lecture yesterday to students and the general public, a break from tradition for the semi-annual lecture series’ tendency to host poets exclusively, English Department members said.

In this unconventional selection of the author, the English Department is trying to expand the focus of the semi-annual lecture series beyond poetry, English Professor of Poetry Jorie Graham said.

Other English Department instructors were equally enthusiastic about the Sri Lankan author’s lecture.

Director of Creative Writing Bret A. Johnston said, “The lecture typically only has a poetry reading, but because [Ondaatje] is so successful both in prose and in poetry, we thought he’d be a wonderful lecturer, reading both his prose and poetry.”

Indeed, Johnston introduced Ondaatje as a writer who is “alone in construction of verse and narrative.”

The writer read several of his poems, including “The Great Tree” and “A Gentleman Compares his Virtue to a Piece of Jade,” and parts of his 2007 prose novel, Divisadero.

By intertwining his prose with the poetry, Ondaatje showed his versatility with language, while demonstrating the new focus of the lecture series, Johnston said.

Ondaatje said in a discussion following his readings how he began as a poet and “never imagined writing a novel.”

“But I think I wanted to take everything from poetry to prose,” Ondaatje said. “I tried to bring the same intimacy and precision from poetry to my prose.”

Ondaatje is best known for his novel “The English Patient,” which was adapted into an Academy-Award winning film.

Ondaatje has also won the Governor General’s award, presented by the Governor General of Canada, for two of his published books of poetry.

Although Ondaatje was born in Sri Lanka, he moved to England and then to Canada, where he studied and became a Canadian citizen.

Ondaatje also wrote a semi-fictional memoir, titled “Running in the Family,” about his childhood in Sri Lanka.

The spring Morris Gray Lecturer will be W.S. Merwin, another writer who has composed both prose and poetry.

Merwin won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry twice, in both 1971 and 2009. He also won the Tanning Prize, one of the highest honors bestowed by the Academy of American Poets.