John Haines

Who was John Haines?

John Haines was an American poet and educator who had served as the poet laureate of Alaska.

John Meade Haines, who was born in Norfolk, Virginia, published nine collections of poetry. He was appointed the Poet Laureate of Alaska in 1969. A collection of critical essays about his poetry, The Wilderness of Vision, was published in 1998. Haines taught graduate level and honors English classes at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He died in Fairbanks, Alaska. Tributes to John Haines by the author and literary critic John A. Murray were published in The Bloomsbury Review, July–August 2011 and The Sewanee Review, Winter 2012. Murray also conducted a lengthy interview with John Haines in The Bloomsbury Review, July–August 2004.