Poet Laureate of Maryland, 2004-2009
Professor of English, Emeritus
St. Mary’s College of Maryland
Michael S. Glaser served as Poet Laureate of Maryland from 2004 – 2009. He is a Professor Emeritus at St. Mary’s College of Maryland where he served as both a professor of English and an administrator for nearly 40 years. While at St. Mary’s, he co-founded and directed the annual Literary Festival as well as the VOICES literary reading series. A recipient of the Homer Dodge Endowed Award for Excellence in Teaching, Glaser has also received the Columbia Merit Award from the Poetry Committee of the Greater Washington, D.C. area for his service to poetry, and Loyola College’s Andrew White Medal for his dedication to the intellectual and scholarly life, and for his commitment to sustaining the poetic tradition in the State of Maryland. Widely sought as a speaker and workshop leader, Glaser served as a Maryland State Arts Council poet-in-the-schools for over 25 years. He has been active with the Maryland Humanities Council’s Speaker’s Bureau, and served on the Council’s Board of Directors from 2011-2017. He also served on the Maryland State Department of Education’s Arts Advisory Committee, writes poetry reviews for The Friends Journal, and co-leads retreats which embrace the reading and writing of poetry as a means of self-reflection, personal growth, and meaningful engagement in the world.
Over 500 of Glaser’s poems have been published in such literary journals and newspapers as the American Scholar, New Letters, Prairie Schooner, Christian Science Monitor, The Antioch Review, The Progressive Magazine and Sacred Journey, as well as in numerous anthologies including Unsettling America (Viking Penguin), Outsiders (Milkweed Editions) and Light Gathering Poems (Holt). His works include A Lover’s Eye (The Bunny & Crocodile Press) and In The Men’s Room and Other Poems which was the winner of the 1996 Painted Bride Quarterly chapbook competition, Being a Father (2004) and Fire Before the Hands, which won the Anabiosis Press, 2007 chapbook prize. Finishing Line Press published Remembering Eden in 2008 and in 2009, The Teacher’s Voice published his prize winning Disrupting Consensus. In 2014, Seasonings Press published The Threat of Rain. Glaser has edited three anthologies: The Cooke Book (1989), Weavings2000: The Maryland Millennial Anthology and Come Celebrate with Me, a memorial tribute to Lucille Clifton (2011). He also served as co-editor, with Kevin Young, of the prize winning Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton (BOA, 2012).
Born in Chicago, Illinois in 1943, Glaser received his B.A. from Denison University and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Kent State University. He lives in St. Mary’s City, Maryland with his wife, the educator Kathleen W. Glaser who works with the Center for Courage and Renewal. He is the proud father of five grown children, Brian, Joshua, Daniel, Amira and Eva, and eleven grandchildren.
