William Meredith (January 9, 1919 – May 30, 2007) served as U.S. Poet Laureate from 1978 to 1980. Other honors included a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship, the Harriet Monroe Memorial Prize, the Carl Sandburg Award, and a Los Angeles Times Book Award. He translated poetry from French and Bulgarian into English. Meredith’s books of poems include Effort at Speech (1997), Partial Accounts (1987), Earth Walk (1970), and Love Letter from an Impossible Land (1944). He also published two books of essays. Meredith taught at Princeton University, the University of Hawaii, and Connecticut College; he served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 1964 – 1987.
