Elizabeth Bishop

My plate honors American poet, Elizabeth Bishop, born in Worcester,Massachusetts on 8 February 1911, died 6 October 1979 in Boston. Her poetry, particularly in the collections Poems: North and South-A Cold Spring (1955) (for which she won the Pulitzer Prize),Questions of Travel (1965),and Geography Ill (1977) evokes her sensitivity to the power and inspiration of place. Made effectively homeless by the death of her father when she was an infant, and the loss of her mother to mental illness when Bishop was only five, Bishop's affection for places like Great Village,Nova Scotia; Key Largo,Florida; and Ouro Preto, Brazil served to fill the gap these losses created. Bishop's poems reflect the deep and sustaining mystery of discovering one's self in relationship to place and others. In addition,they attempt to fathom the unspeakable anxiety of unavoidable loss and the transience of human experience.