For Immediate Release
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CONTACT: Christi Powers
State Bar of Wisconsin
(800) 444-9404, ext. 6025
cpowers@wisbar.org
or
Jason Westphal
(800) 444-9404, ext.6077
(608) 220-1258 (mobile)
jwestphal@wisbar.org
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Internationally-renowned Andrei Codrescu to speak at State Bar of
Wisconsin annual convention on Thursday
Author, poet, scholar and filmmaker provides a different perspective on
the legal world
MADISON, May 5, 2003 - He's known as a poet,
humorist, author, filmmaker and social critic. And he's not your typical
fare at a legal convention. But he'll be in Milwaukee at the Midwest
Airlines Center on Thursday, May 8 as the keynote speaker for the State
Bar of Wisconsin annual convention.
He's Andrei Codrescu, a Romanian born scholar who emigrated to the
U.S. in 1966 and has an unusual and refreshing view of American life,
society, politics and law. He is a professor of English at Louisiana
State University and just published another book this month "Casanova in
Bohemia." A regular contributor on National Public Radio, Codrescu has
also appeared on The David Letterman Show, The Charlie Rose Show,
TheToday Show and on CNN as well as writing for The Chicago Tribune, The
Baltimore Sun and The New York Times. His prolific works have won him a
National Endowment for the Arts award, a General Electric Foundation
Poetry prize, the American Civil Liberty Union's Freedom of Speech award
plus a Peabody award.
"I think the Bar's willingness to invite a non-lawyer author to share
his vision of and appreciation for the law and lawyers is quite a
remarkable commitment," said Judge Bill Honrath, a Milwaukee County
Circuit Court judge who was integral in bringing Codrescu to Milwaukee.
"From my familiarity with his work, especially his experience with
government censorship and repression, I know he places a great deal of
value on the role lawyers play in sustaining a participatory
democracy."
Much of Codrescu's work has a common theme - a reverence for freedom
and an appreciation of diversity. Born in Sibiu, Romania in 1946,
Codrescu's childhood was mired in communism, which eventually spawned a
prolific need for self expression and a probing view of American
life.
"The fact that an American is not an ethnicity of any particular
kind, while being of many ethnicities, is a kind of ongoing miracle held
together in large part by the poetry of the Constitution," Codrescu
said. "That America has the greatest creative energy and wealth in the
world is due entirely to the acceptance of our differences on the basis
of that agreement," he said.
Codrescu is the keynote Thursday morning speaker at the State Bar of
Wisconsin's annual convention which runs from May 7 to 9 at the Midwest
Airlines Center, Milwaukee. His presentation, "Lawyers, Poets and other Alchemists: Looking for Gold
in the 21st Century," begins at 9 a.m.
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