W. E. Butts

Who is W. E. Butts?

Walter E. Butts was an American poet and the Poet Laureate of New Hampshire. His book Sunday Evening at the Stardust Café was a finalist for the 2005 Philip Levine Prize in Poetry from the California State University, Fresno, and won the Iowa Source Poetry Book Prize. He has also received a Pushcart Prize nomination.

His work has been published in such literary journals as The Atlanta Review, Poetry East, Cimarron Review, Mid-American Review, Slant, PoetryMotel, Poet Lore and Spillway and has been anthologized in Emerson of Harvard, Tokens: Contemporary Poetry of the Subway, and The Anthology of Magazine Verse & Yearbook of American Poetry. He has also written reviews of other poets' works, including Tell Them We Were Here by David Kelly, a Rochester, New York–area poet.

Until the late 1970s, Butts lived in LeRoy, New York near Rochester, where he was one of several poets who organized featured readings and open mics in the area, most notably at The Cobbs Hill Grille, a popular local bar and restaurant. Over the next few years he lived in Albany, New York, New York City, Boston, and Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and most recently in Manchester, New Hampshire. In April 2003, he was among the participants in the first gathering of state poets laureate organized by New Hampshire’s poet laureate, Marie Harris. That same year, he also toured northern New Hampshire with South Dakota poet David Allan Evans, giving readings and discussions at community centers and bookstores. Some of these were broadcast on regional National Public Radio and Public Broadcasting stations.