Beginning in the spring of 2025 and continuing into the fall term, OLLI has been “shining a light on poetry” with various poetry related events. The culminating event will be a presentation by the poet Keith Taylor. This is the first time that OLLI Reads has focused on poetry and a poet, and we are delighted to welcome Keith Taylor who will read from and discuss his most recent collection of poems, What Can the Matter Be? This collection of poems is part of the Made in Michigan Writer Series and was named as a 2025 Michigan Notable Book by the Library of Michigan.
In this spare and elegant collection, distinguished poet Keith Taylor demonstrates his finest power of observation, watching the natural and human world go by. This is a book that starts in the bleak times of the Covid pandemic but then searches for ways to find light and hope, ending in a very different, even exuberant place.
Taylor was born in British Columbia. He spent his childhood in Alberta and his adolescence in Indiana. After several years of traveling, he moved to Michigan, where he earned his M.A. in English at Central Michigan University. He has worked as a camp-boy for a hunting outfitter in the Yukon, as a dishwasher in southern France, a housepainter in Indiana and Ireland, a freight handler, a teacher, a freelance writer, the co-host of a radio talk show, and as the night attendant at a pinball arcade in California. For more than twenty years he worked as a bookseller in Ann Arbor. Then he taught in the undergraduate and graduate creative writing programs at the University of Michigan and directed the Bear River Writers Conference. From 2010–2018 he worked as the Poetry Editor at Michigan Quarterly Review. Keith Taylor is the author, editor, or translator of 20 books. He is the A.L. Becker Collegiate Lecturer in English, Emeritus, at the University of Michigan.
