Poet Hadaway Receives Prestigious Fellowship

AMHERST, VA. – Poet Meredith Davies Hadaway of Chestertown has been awarded a fellowship to the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA). Funded by the William G. Sackett Fellowship Endowment, the award will provide a three-week working retreat in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in spring 2012. Hadaway, who serves as Vice President of College Relations and Marketing at Washington College and – occasionally – as an adjunct instructor in English, will focus on her poetry in the company of 25 other artists during her fellowship.

Hadaway has published two volumes, The River is a Reason (January, 2011) and Fishing Secrets of the Dead (2005), both issued by Word Press in Cincinnati, Ohio. One of Hadaway's poems was recently selected by Mark Doty for honorable mention in the 2010 Robinson Jeffers Tor House Poetry Prize. Another was chosen for inclusion in Best Millennium Writings Awards. She has received two Pushcart nominations and a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award. In addition to publishing poetry in numerous literary journals, she is a frequent contributor of book reviews to Poetry International and serves as poetry editor for The Summerset Review.

Hadaway also is an avid musician who has combined poetry and Celtic harp in performances around the U.S. and Ireland. She holds an M.F.A. in poetry from the Vermont College of Fine Arts, an M.A. in Psychology from Washington College, and a B.A. in English Literature from American University.

The VCCA is one of the nation's largest year-round artists’ communities and has served more than 4,000 artists since its inception in 1971. It provides lodging, meals, and an undistracted environment where visual artists, writers, composers, performance artists, filmmakers and other collaborative artists can focus on their work.

Previous VCCA Fellows have received worldwide attention through publications, exhibitions, compositions, performances, and have earned major awards and accolades, including MacArthur grants, Pulitzer Prizes, Guggenheim fellowships, National Endowment for the Arts awards, Rome Prizes, Pollock-Krasner grants, National Book Awards, Broadway and Off-Broadway productions, and Academy Award nominations.

Professor Jehanne Dubrow's Poetry Earns Honors

CHESTERTOWN—Poet Jehanne Dubrow, assistant professor of English at Washington College, is being recognized with national, regional and state honors this month.

On Monday, May 9, her collection Stateside was awarded the 2011 book prize for poetry from the Society of Midland Authors. Since its founding in 1915, the Chicago-based literary society has presented jury-based awards to authors and poets who “reside in, were born in, or have strong ties to the 12-state Midwestern Heartland.” (Dubrow forged her strong ties while earning her PhD in English from the University of Nebraska.)

The same day, the Poetry Foundation’s column and website “American Life in Poetry,” (http://www.americanlifeinpoetry.org) began featuring her work “Chernobyl Year” as the poem of theweek. “Chernobyl Year” is the first poem in Dubrow’s recently completed manuscript ""Red Army Red." The “American Life in Poetry” column, which is edited by Pulitzer Prize winner and former U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser, is carried in newspapers across the country and on the New York Times education blog, “The Learning Network.”

To cap it all off, on Tuesday, May 16, Dubrow will be recognized at a Maryland State Arts Council reception as the recipient of a $6,000 Individual Artist Award in poetry.

In addition to Stateside, Dubrow is the author of two earlier poetry collections—From the Fever World and The Hardship Post—plus a chapbook, The Promised Bride. Her work has appeared in numerous magazines and journals, including Poetry, New England Review, The New Republic, West Branch, The Hudson Review, and Ploughshares. She also blogs about the writing life at “Notes from the Gefilte Review” (http://gefiltereview.blogspot.com).

Dubrow has been the recipient of a Walter E. Dakin Fellowship and Howard Nemerov Scholarship from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, a Sosland Foundation Fellowship from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and scholarships from the West Chester Poetry Conference, the Nebraska Summer Writers’ Conference, and the Institute on the Holocaust and Jewish Civilization. For more information, visit http://www.jehannedubrow.com/

Spoken Word Artist Kevin Coval to Perform, Screen Film April 18 at Washington College

CHESTERTOWN, MD—Spoken-word phenom Kevin Coval, founder of the Louder than a Bomb youth poetry slam, will bring his distinctive style to Washington College later this month. He will offer workshops and readings on campus and at a Rose O’Neill Literary House co-sponsored event in Washington, D.C.

On April 17 at 4 p.m., Coval will perform at Busboys and Poets (14^th and V streets N.W.). The D.C. Youth Slam Team will open the show.

He will visit Washington College on Monday, April 18 for a 4:30 p.m. performance in Tawes Theatre, the Daniel Z. Gibson Center for the Arts, and a 7:30 p.m. screening of the award-winning documentary film Louder Than a Bomb in Norman James Theatre (the film also screens on April 15 and April 17). Both events are free and open to the public. Coval will also meet with students in Professor Mark Nowak’s “Living Writers” class and Professor Robert Earl Price’s “Performance Poetry” class.

Coval is known for his four appearances on Russell Simmons’ hit HBO series “Def Poetry” and his acclaimed poetry books Everyday People and Slingshots. Legendary Chicago author and radio star Studs Terkel once described Coval’s poetic voice as “our hope for a new world of peace, grace, and beauty.”

Coval founded Louder than a Bomb in 2001 as an annual performance competition to encourage the voices of aspiring high-school-aged poets. It is now the largest youth poetry festival in the world. Filmmakers Jon Siskel and Greg Jacobs created their acclaimed documentary about the festival in 2010.

For a clip from the Louder Than a Bomb film and more information on this and other Lit House events, visit http://lithouse.washcoll.edu and click on “Blog.”

Pulitzer Prize-Winning Poet Trethewey to Read from Her Work April 1 at Washington College

CHESTERTOWN, MD—Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Natasha Trethewey, the featured literary light of this year’s Sophie Kerr Weekend at Washington College, will read from her work Friday, April 1 at 4 p.m. in Decker Theatre, Gibson Center for the Arts.

Trethewey is author of Native Guard (Houghton Mifflin), for which she won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize, and Bellocq’s Ophelia (Graywolf, 2002), which was named a Notable Book for 2003 by the American Library Association. Her first collection, Domestic Work (Graywolf, 2000), was selected by Rita Dove as the inaugural 1999 Cave Canem Poetry Prize winner, recognized as the best first book by an African American poet. Her fourth book of poetry, Thrall, is scheduled for publication by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in fall 2012.

In an introduction to Domestic Work, Rita Dove wrote that Trethewey “eschews the Polaroid instant, choosing to render the unsuspecting yearnings and tremulous hopes that accompany our most private thoughts—reclaiming for us that interior life where the true self flourishes and to which we return, in solitary reverie, for strength." Other poets have described her work as “nearly flawless,” and “a rare, beautiful gift to the reader.”

A native of Gulfport, Mississippi, Trethewey often writes about family history and growing up biracial in the American South. Her parents’ interracial marriage—she an African American native of Mississippi and he a white Canadian—was illegal in 20 states at the time. They eventually divorced and Trethewey’s mother remarried, to the man who would murder her.

Trethewey, who was 18 when her stepfather killed her mother, shared with radio interviewer Terry Gross the strange coincidence that, “Ten days shy of my mother’s 41^st birthday, she was murdered. And ten days shy of my 41^st birthday, I won the Pulitzer. I was very mindful of that strange coincidence—that at this point in both of our lives, this is what we had come to.” Her reflections on her mother’s life are part of Native Guard. She later chronicled childhood memories along with her family’s efforts to rebuild their lives after Hurricane Katrina in a 2010 book of creative non-fiction titled Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast (University of Georgia Press).

Currently a professor of English and the Phillis Wheatley Distinguished Chair in Poetry at Emory University, Trethewey has been published in several volumes of Best American Poetry, and in journals such as Agni, American Poetry Review, Callaloo, Gettysburg Review, Kenyon Review, New England Review, and The Southern Review.

Among her many honors, Trethewey has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Bunting Fellowship Program of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, and the National Endowment for the Arts. A member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, she will soon be inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame.

Trethewey’s reading kicks off the annual Sophie Kerr Weekend, which brings high school writers to the Washington College campus for a taste of its literary life with workshops, lectures and related arts events. The weekend also celebrates the legacy of the late Sophie Kerr, a writer from Denton, Md., whose generosity has done so much to enrich Washington College’s literary culture. When she died in 1965, Kerr left the bulk of her estate to the College, specifying that one half of the income from her bequest be awarded every year to the senior showing the most “ability and promise for future fulfillment in the field of literary endeavor” and the other half be used to bring visiting writers to campus, to fund scholarships and to help defray the costs of student publications.

For more information, visit http://english.washcoll.edu.

This Mon & Tues: The Beat Generation and All That Jazz!

CHESTERTOWN, MD— In 1978, Allen Ginsberg brought the iconoclastic poetry and freewheeling spirit of the Beat Movement to Chestertown. On a visit to Washington College, Ginsberg read his celebrated poem “Howl” to a packed house and, so the story goes, attempted to levitate a few stubbornly recalcitrant buildings.

This month, the spirit of the Beats will return to Washington College in The Beat Generation and All That Jazz, a two-day commemoration headlined by musician David Amram, an original member of the Beats who worked closely with Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and others.

The program begins on Monday, March 28 with a screening of Howl at 7:30 p.m. in Norman James Theatre on the College campus (300 Washington Avenue). This 2010 film, starring James Franco, is a genre-bending hybrid mixing Ginsberg’s original reading of his epic poem with animation and a dramatization of the obscenity trial that followed in 1957. Amram, who often accompanied Ginsberg and Kerouac at coffeehouse “jazz/poetry” performances, will introduce the film.

On Tuesday, March 29, at 7 p.m., Amram will give a concert in Decker Theatre accompanied by Washington College’s own Tom Anthony on bass and Ray Anthony on drums. The trio will play favorites from Amran’s long and varied career, which has included collaborations with iconic musicians and composers ranging from Leonard Bernstein to Dizzy Gillespie and Willie Nelson. The concert will also include a screening of the short 1959 film, Pull My Daisy, narrated by Jack Kerouac with music by Amram.

In his post-Beat years, David Amram has gone on to a stellar career as a musician and composer, producing orchestral and chamber music works, operas, and scores for Broadway productions and feature films, including Splendor in The Grass and The Manchurian Candidate. He has authored three books, including the memoir Offbeat: Collaborating with Kerouac (Paradigm, 2008). During his visit to Washington College, Amram will also offer a special "music/poetry" workshop and open rehearsal for students. (Contact Professor Kenneth Schweitzer, kschweitzer2@washcoll.edu, for workshop registration).

“We’re excited to welcome the Beat Generation – in the multitalented person of David Amram – to Washington College,” said Adam Goodheart, Hodson Trust-Griswold Director of the C.V. Starr Center. “More than thirty years after Allen Ginsberg’s legendary visit to campus, a new cohort of students will be able to come face-to-face with a movement that continues to inspire millions.”

Sponsored by the C.V. Starr Center and co-sponsored by the American Studies Program, the Department of Music, and the Rose O’Neil Literary House, both Beat Generation programs are free and open to the public.

Founded in 1782 under the patronage of George Washington, Washington College is a private, independent college of liberal arts and sciences located in colonial Chestertown on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. The College’s C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience is dedicated to fostering innovative approaches to the nation’s past and present through educational programs, scholarship and public outreach, and a special focus on written history. For more information on the Center, visit http://starrcenter.washcoll.edu.

Scholar Explores Emerson, Photography in Rose O'Neill Literary House Talk

CHESTERTOWN – Sean Meehan, Assistant Professor of English at Washington College, will present “‘This is a Fragment of Me’: Emerson and the Poetics of Metonymy” at the Rose O’Neill Literary House on Tuesday, November 17, at 4 p.m.

Dr. Meehan began his scholarly focus on the American writer Ralph Waldo Emerson with a dissertation on photography in 19th-century American autobiography, completed at the University of Iowa.

Dr. Meehan recently published a book based on that dissertation, Mediating American Autobiography: Photography in Emerson, Thoreau, Douglass, and Whitman. His upcoming lecture on Emerson and metonymy is part of his current work-in-progress, a study of Emerson’s engagement with the practice and theory of education and an exploration of Emersonian ways of learning both from the past and for the future.

Dr. Meehan was awarded the Ralph Waldo Emerson Memorial Association Fellowship for 2005-2006 from Houghton Library, Harvard University. He published an article based on research he did at Houghton in Emerson Society Papers (2006), “Living Learning: Lessons from Emerson’s School.”

In addition to teaching the courses “Emerson and Whitman” and “American Environmental Writing,” Dr. Meehan teaches “Literature and Composition” and is the Director of Writing for Washington College.

Dr. Meehan’s presentation is part of the Rose O’Neill Literary House’s recently relaunched “Tea and Talk” series, which highlights the work of authors and scholars on the faculty and staff of Washington College.

The series will continue in Spring 2010 with presentations by Associate Professor of Political Science and International Studies Christine Wade, Assistant Professor of Drama Michele Volansky, and Vassar College Professor Emeritus of History (and Washington College Trustee) Benjamin Kohl.

Admission to “‘This is a Fragment of Me’: Emerson and the Poetics of Metonymy” is free and open to the public. For more information, call 410/778-7899 or visit lithouse.washcoll.edu.

Strings Attached: Tea & Talk Series Welcomes Poet & Harpist Meredith Hadaway March 18

Chestertown, MD, March 13, 2003 — Washington College's O'Neill Literary House Tea & Talk Series continues its spring lecture series on Tuesday, March 18 at 4 p.m. with “Strings Attached,” a poetry reading and Celtic harp performance by Meredith Davies Hadaway, Vice President for College Relations at Washington College. The event is free and the public is invited to attend.

Hadaway has played the harp in local and regional venues, and has traveled to Ireland as a guest artist for the Clifden (Connemara) Community Arts festival. She is currently a candidate for a Master of Fine Arts degree in poetry from Vermont College.

On April 22, the spring Tea & Talk Series will conclude with a talk by equity actress Polly Kuulei Sommerfeld, a lecturer in drama at Washington College, speaking about “What's Equity Got to Do With It?”, a Q&A focusing on the challenges faced by professional actors.

The Tea & Talk Series provides opportunities for college faculty and staff to share their areas of expertise with the college and with the surrounding community. All talks are held at the O'Neill Literary House on Washington Avenue in Chestertown. Tea is served at 4 p.m.; talks begin at 4:30 p.m. Admission is free.

Black History Month Reading: Poet Calvin Forbes On Campus February 28th

Chestertown, MD, February 21, 2002 — The Sophie Kerr Committee, in celebration of Black History Month, presents poet Calvin Forbes reading from his work on Thursday, February 28, 2002, at 4:30 p.m. in the College's Sophie Kerr Room, Miller Library. The event is free and the public is invited to attend.

A former assistant professor of creative writing at the College, Forbes is "one of the prominent black voices to develop out of the 1970s . . . He communicates a . . . highly moral philosophy as well as the thoughts and emotions of a writer whose artistic ability and vision are still expanding," according to Dictionary of Literary Biography essayist Robert A. Coles. Forbes spent his poet's apprenticeship hitchhiking around the United States, working with poet Jose Garcia Villa at the New School for Social Research, and studying the works of John Donne, Gwendolyn Brooks and Philip Larkin. Whether writing about the lives of street people or the origin of the artistic impulse, in all his work, observes Coles, "Forbes is skillful in the way he suggests double, and sometimes, triple layered meanings through tight control over simile and metaphor, both of which spark clear, powerful phrases and images."

Forbes was born in Newark, NJ in 1945. He attended the New School for Social Research, Rutgers University, and Brown University, where he earned his M.F.A. His books of poetry include "The Shine Poems" (Louisiana State University Press, 2001), "From the Book of Shine" (1979), and "Blue Monday" (1974). His poems have appeared in many journals and can be found in anthologies such as "A Century in Two Decades: A Burning Deck Anthology, 1961-81" (1982) and "New Black Voices" (1972). His honors and awards include fellowships from the Illinois Arts Council, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference. Forbes currently is an associate professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he teaches writing, literature and jazz history.

Washington College Celebrates National Poetry Month

Leading Poet Dick Allen to Read and Lecture April 11 and 12

Chestertown, MD — Dick Allen, regarded as one of America's leading contemporary poets and writers, will read from his work and lecture on contemporary poetry at Washington College. The reading takes place at 4 p.m., Tuesday April 11, in the Casey Academic Center Forum. His lecture, "Contemporary Poetry: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly, and The Weird," will be held at 4:30 p.m., Wednesday April 12, in the Sophie Kerr Room in the College's Miller Library.

A widely published and anthologized poet, Allen will read from Ode to the Cold War and poems written and published after that 1997 book. Allen's other books of poetry include Flight and Pursuit; Overnight in the Guest House of the Mystic, nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award for the year's best poetry collection; Regions With No Proper Names; and Anon and Various Time Machine Poems.

In his lecture, Allen says he will examine "what's really right and what's really wrong about contemporary poetry, especially American poetry." He'll discuss such movements as New Formalism, Expansive Poetry, the New Narrative, and Language Poetry and talk about why poetry is both greatly popular and not popular at all in America today. Allen also will discuss little-known aspects of what the current state of poetry reveals about contemporary society and contemporary individuals.

Allen has received many awards including a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry Writing, the Hart Crane Poetry Fellowship, the Robert Frost Poetry Fellowship (Bread Loaf), and an Academy of American Poets prize. A noted speaker, he has presented more than 150 lectures, panel talks, and poetry readings at colleges and universities throughout the United States. He also reviews poetry, and is the director of creative writing and Charles A. Dana professor of English at the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut.

Allen's appearances are sponsored by the Sophie Kerr Committee and are free and open to the public.

NYC-Based Poet/Chanteuse Performs at Washington College

Chestertown, MD — Jane LeCroy, New York poet, singer and novelist performs poetry/jazz with bassist Tom Abbs at 7 p.m., Thursday, April 6 at the O'Neill Literary House on the campus of Washington College.

Of LeCroy's jazz/poetry, New York Press writer Jordan Flaherty said, "Her lyrics bring a world-weary cynicism and a newborn's sense of wonder to songs about everything from outer space and electricity to sex and numbers." Avant Garde Classics Series said, "Her clever verse cuts through the superficialities of life. . . . and her dark cabaret style haunts the listener." Abbs has been called "a force of nature playing the upright bass. Together the two are raw and beautiful." The audience will find their performance characterized by spontaneous acts of courage—half their set is improvised, while the other half is "as alive and open as it is planned and refined."

LeCroy's jazz/poetry performance is sponsored by the Washington College Friends of the Arts, Friends of the O'Neill Literary House, and The Writers Union. It is free and open to the public.

Irish Yeats Scholar To Speak at Washington College

Chestertown, MD —Colbert Kearney from Ireland's University College, Cork, will talk on poet William Butler Yeats, Thurs. March 2, at 4 p.m. in the Sophie Kerr Room in Miller Library on the College campus. His lecture, titled "Yeats: The Present Imperfect" will take into consideration the poems "The Lake Isle of Innisfree," "No Second Troy," "September 1913," "Adam's Curse," and "In Memory of Major Robert Gregory."

Kearney also will be available to answer questions from students interested in attending University College, Cork, through Washington College's newly established exchange program with the Irish university.

Kearney's talk is free and open to the public.

Poet Gerald Stern to Visit WC

Chestertown, MD — Poet Gerald Stern, winner of the 1998 National Book Award for Poetry, will give a public reading at Washington College on Thursday, September 16. The reading will begin at 8 p.m. in the Sophie Kerr Room of Miller Library.

Often heralded as the modern-day Walt Whitman, Stern has garnered praise for possessing a deep emotional sensibility and for wholeheartedly embracing the paradoxical nature of life. He writes, according to critics, "with enormous authority and intensity of the lot common to humanity -- of aging and death, of the tenderness of love, of family and friendship."

The author of nine books of poetry, Stern was 48 years old when his first collection, Rejoicings, appeared in 1973. His latest compendium, This Time: New and Selected Poems, received the 1998 National Book Award for Poetry. Among other awards, his works have received the Paterson Poetry Prize and the Melville Caine Award from the Poetry Society of America.

Stern's honors include the Paris Review's Bernard F. Conners Award, the Bess Hokin Award, the Ruth Lilly Prize, four National Endowment for the Arts grants, the Pennsylvania Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts, the Jerome J. Shestack Poetry Prize from American Poetry Review, and fellowships from The Academy of American Poets, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. He has taught at numerous universities and spent 13 years on the faculty of the Iowa Writer's Workshop.

Poet Robert Creeley, Winner of Frost Medal, to Visit Washington College

Chestertown, MD — Robert Creeley, one of the most influential literary figures of the postmodern age, will give a public reading at Washington College on Tuesday, September 7th. The reading begins at 8 p.m. in the Sophie Kerr Room of Miller Library.

Throughout the 1950s, Creeley was associated with the "Black Mountain Poets," a group of writers including Denise Levertov, Ed Dorn, Charles Olson, and others experimenting with new forms of poetry. Olson and Creeley together developed the concept of "projective verse," a kind of poety that abandoned traditional forms in favor of a freely constructed verse that took shape as the process of composing it was underway.

Creeley formulated one of the basic principles of this new poetry: the idea that "form is never more than an extension of content." Creeley’s much-imitated poetry is marked by minimalism and a compression of emotion into verse in which every syllable bears meaning. He was a leader in the generational shift that veered away from history and tradition as primary poetic sources and turned to personal experience.

He is a poet, novelist, short story writer, essayist, and editor who has won many honors for his writing, including a National Book Award nomination in 1962 for For Love, the Poetry Society of America’s Frost Medal in 1987, the Walt Whitman citation of merit in 1989, and the America Award for Poetry in 1995.

For several years Creeley was the David Gray Professor of Poetry and Letters at the State University of New York at Buffalo, where he still teaches.