English Department

 

Holloway Hall

Writers on the Shore

RICHARD JACKSON
Thursday, September 21, 2006
8:00 p.m. Montgomery Room / Commons
Free admission. A reception will follow. Please join us.

RICHARD JACKSON is the author of nine books of poems, including Half Lives: Petrarchan Poems (Autumn House, 2004) Unauthorized Autobiography: New and Selected Poems (Ashland Poetry Press, 2003), Heartwall (U Mass, 2000), Alive All Day (Cleveland State, 1992), Worlds Apart (U Alabama, 1987), and Part of the Story (Grove, 1983). He is also the author of a book of criticism, Dismantling Time in Contemporary American Poetry (U Alabama, 1988), and Acts of Mind: Interviews with Contemporary American Poets (U Alabama, 1983). He edits Poetry Miscellany. He has been a member of the Sarajevo Committee organized by P.E.N. International; in 2000, he was awarded the Order of Freedom Medal for literary and humanitarian work in the Balkans by the President of Slovenia. He has received Guggenheim, NEA, NEH, and two Witter-Bynner Fellowships, and has been Fulbright Exchange poet to former Yugoslavia. He has edited two anthologies of Slovene poetry, and lectured on translation issues at Oxford University, The University of Ljubljana, and Vermont College, among other venues.


MICHAEL WATERS
Reading from his new book Darling Vulgarity
Thursday, October 5, 2006
8:00 p.m. Great Room / Holloway Hall
Free admission. A reception and book signing will follow. Please join us.

Michael Waters has published eight books of poetry, including Darling Vulgarity (2006); Parthenopi: New and Selected Poems (2001); Green Ash, Red Maple, Black Gum (1997)—these titles from BOA Editions—Bountiful (1992); The Burden Lifters (1989); and Anniversary of the Air (1985)—these titles from Carnegie Mellon UP. He has edited/ co-edited several volumes, including Contemporary American Poetry (Houghton Mifflin, 2006) and Perfect in Their Art: Poems on Boxing from Homer to Ali (Southern Illinois UP, 2003). The recipient of a Fellowship in Creative Writing from the National Endowment for the Arts, several Individual Artist Awards from the Maryland State Arts Council, and three Pushcart Prizes, he has published poems in numerous journals, including Poetry, The Yale Review, The American Poetry Review, Rolling Stone, The Kenyon Review, The Southern Review, The Gettysburg Review, The Georgia Review, The North American Review, and Ploughshares. In 2004, he chaired the Poetry Panel for The National Book Award.

Michael Waters joined the faculty of Salisbury University in 1978. He has also taught at Ohio University and the University of Maryland, and has been Visiting Professor of American Literature at the University of Athens, Greece, Banister Writer-in-Residence at Sweet Briar College, Stadler Poet-in-Residence at Bucknell University, and Distinguished Poet-in-Residence at Wichita State University. In spring 2007, he will be Fulbright Lecturer at University Al. I. Cuza in Iasi, Romania. He has taught for several summer programs, including the Catskill Poetry Workshop, the Writers’ Center at Chautauqua, the West Virginia Writers’ Workshop, the Prague Summer Program, and the New England College MFA Program, and has been the recipient of residency fellowships from Yaddo, The MacDowell Colony, The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, The Anderson Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, The Tyrone Guthrie Centre (Ireland), Le Chateau de Lavigny (Switzerland), and The St. James Cavalier Centre (Malta). Waters has read his poems at universities throughout the United States as well as at universities and other venues abroad, including the Al-Merbid Poetry Festival in Baghdad, Iraq.

Critic Floyd Collins has written in The Gettysburg Review: "I cannot call to mind anyone of Waters’ generation who is currently writing better poetry."

Darling Vulgarity and Parthenopi: New and Selected Poems will be available following the reading.


DAVID WOJAHN
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
8:00 p.m. Montgomery Room / Commons
Free admission. A reception will follow. Please join us.

David Wojahn’s Icehouse Lights was the winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets prize, and published by Yale UP in 1982. The collection was also the winner of the Poetry Society of America's William Carlos Williams Book Award. His second collection, Glassworks, was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in 1987, and was awarded the Society of Midland Authors' Award. Pittsburgh is also the publisher of Mystery Train (1990), Late Empire (1994), The Falling Hour (1997), Spirit Cabinet (2002), and his most recent collection, Interrogation Palace: New and Selected Poems 1982-2004 (2006). He is also the author of a collection of essays on contemporary poetry, Strange Good Fortune (University of Arkansas Press, 2001), and editor (with Jack Myers) of A Profile of 20th Century American Poetry (Southern Illinois University Press, 1991) and a posthumous collection of Lynda Hull's poetry, The Only World (HarperCollins, 1995). He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the Illinois and Indiana Councils for the Arts, and in 1987-88 was the Amy Lowell Traveling Poetry Scholar. He has taught at Indiana University, the University of Chicago, the University of Houston, the University of Alabama, and the University of New Orleans. He is presently Professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University, and is also a member of the program faculty of the MFA in Writing Program of Vermont College.


MALENA MÖRLING
Tuesday, November 7, 2006
8:00 p.m. Montgomery Room / Commons
Free admission. A reception will follow. Please join us.

Malena Mörling, assistant professor of creative writing at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, is the author of Ocean Avenue, selected by Philip Levine for the New Issues Poetry Prize. She has translated works by the Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer, a selection of which appears in the collection, For the Living and the Dead. Her work has appeared in numerous publications including the New York Times Book Review, New Republic, Washington Post Book World, Ploughshares, New England Review, and Five Points.