Poet Richard Kenney will give a reading at the Joseph F. Wheeler Theater on Sunday, April 27, at 1:30 pm. A book-signing and reception will follow.

Kenney’s poetry is as informed by science as it is by Celtic and classical literatures. He writes about human evolution and language origins, the cognitive basis of poetic forms, magical reasoning, and the Darwinian lives of subliterary species such as jokes, riddles, proverbs, charms, spells, nursery rhymes, and weather-saws.

Inspired by such poets as Shakespeare, Keats, Hopkins, Yeats, Auden, Frost, and Larkin, Kenney’s books include “The Evolution of the Flightless Bird”, “Orrery”, and “The Invention of the Zero.” His most recent book, “The One-Strand River”, is a collection of poems from 1994 to 2007.

The reading is free, and is presented as part of a new partnership between Centrum and the Foothills Writers’ Series. On April 28, Kenney will make a classroom visit and give a noon reading at Peninsula College.