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

Poet Laureate

A poet laureate is a poet officially appointed by a government and is often expected to compose poems for state occasions and other government events...

 of Alaska

Alaska

Alaska is the largest state in the United States by area. It is situated in the northwest extremity of the North American continent, with Canada to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia further west across the Bering Strait...

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John Meade Haines, who was born in Norfolk, Virginia

Norfolk, Virginia

Norfolk is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. With a population of 242,803 as of the 2010 Census, it is Virginia's second-largest city behind neighboring Virginia Beach....

, 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

University of Alaska Fairbanks

The University of Alaska Fairbanks, located in Fairbanks, Alaska, USA, is the flagship campus of the University of Alaska System, and is abbreviated as Alaska or UAF....

. He died in Fairbanks, Alaska

Fairbanks, Alaska

Fairbanks is a home rule city in and the borough seat of the Fairbanks North Star Borough in the U.S. state of Alaska.Fairbanks is the largest city in the Interior region of Alaska, and second largest in the state behind Anchorage...

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Anthologies

• A Place on Earth: An Anthology of Nature Writing from Australia and North America. 2004. Edited by Mark Tredinnick.
• The Best American Poetry 1999
  The Best American Poetry 1999
  The Best American Poetry 1999, a volume in The Best American Poetry series, was edited by David Lehman and by guest editor Robert Bly.-Poets and poems included:-External links:* , with links to each publication where the poems originally appeared...
  
  . Edited by David Lehman
  David Lehman
  David Lehman is a poet and the series editor for The Best American Poetry series. He teaches at The New School in New York City.-Career:...
  
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• A Republic of Rivers: Three Centuries of Nature Writing from Alaska and the Yukon. 1990. Edited by John A. Murray.
• Inroads: An Anthology Celebrating Alaska's Twenty-seven Fellowship Writers. 1988. Edited by Elyse Guttenberg and Jean Anderson.
• Poetry of the Committed Individual. 1973. Edited by Jon Silkin
  Jon Silkin
  Jon Silkin was a British poet.-Early life:Jon Silkin was born in London, in a Jewish immigrant family and named after Jon Forsyte in The Forsyte Saga, and attended Wycliffe College and Dulwich College During the Second World War he was one of the children evacuated from London ; he remembered that...
  
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Honors

• 2008 Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry
  Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry
  The Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry is an annual prize, administered by the Sewanee Review and the University of the South, awarded to a writer who has had a substantial and distinguished career. It was established through a bequest by Dr. K.P.A...
  
  
• 2007 USA Rasmuson Fellow from United States Artists
  United States Artists
  United States Artists is an independent nonprofit and nongovernmental philanthropic organization based in Los Angeles, California and dedicated to supporting the work of living American artists by the granting of cash awards, called USA Fellowships...
  
  
• 2005 Rasmuson Foundation Distinguished Artist
• University of Alaska Northern Momentum Scholar, 2002
• Fellow, the Academy of American Poets
  Academy of American Poets
  The Academy of American Poets is a non-profit organization dedicated to the art of poetry. The Academy was incorporated as a "membership corporation" in New York State in 1934...
  
  , 1997
• Lifetime Achievement Award from the Alaska Center for the Book/Library of Congress
  Library of Congress
  The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
  
  , 1994
• Poets' Prize
  Poets' Prize
  The Poets' Prize is awarded annually for the best book of verse published by a living American poet two years prior to the award year. The $3000 annual prize is donated by a committee of about 20 American poets, who each nominate two books and who also serve as judges...
  
  , 1991
• Alaska Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts
• two Guggenheim Fellowship
  Guggenheim Fellowship
  Guggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...
  
  s
• National Endowment for the Arts
  National Endowment for the Arts
  The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...
  
   Fellowship
• Amy Lowell
  Amy Lowell
  Amy Lawrence Lowell was an American poet of the imagist school from Brookline, Massachusetts who posthumously won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1926.- Personal life:...
  
   Traveling Fellowship, 1976–1977

Further reading

Kooistra was a long-time friend of Haines.

• Gioia, Dana
  Dana Gioia
  -Poetry:It was as a poet that Gioia first began to attract widespread attention in the early 1980s, with frequent appearances in The Hudson Review, Poetry, and The New Yorker. In the same period, he published a number of essays and book reviews...
  
  , "Introduction", in The Wilderness of Vision is a collection of criticism of Haines' poetry.