The West Chester University Poetry Conference is an international
poetry
Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings i ...
conference that has been held annually since 1995 at
West Chester University
West Chester University (also known as West Chester, WCU, or WCUPA, and officially as West Chester University of Pennsylvania) is a public research university in and around West Chester, Pennsylvania. The university is accredited by the Middle ...
,
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...
, United States. It hosts various panel discussions and poetry craft
workshops
Beginning with the Industrial Revolution era, a workshop may be a room, rooms or building which provides both the area and tools (or machinery) that may be required for the manufacture or repair of manufactured goods. Workshops were the onl ...
, which focus primarily on formal poetry,
narrative poetry
Narrative poetry is a form of poetry that tells a story, often using the voices of both a narrator and characters; the entire story is usually written in metered verse. Narrative poems do not need rhyme. The poems that make up this genre may be ...
,
New Formalism
New Formalism is a late 20th- and early 21st-century movement in American poetry that has promoted a return to metrical, rhymed verse and narrative poetry on the grounds that all three are necessary if American poetry is to compete with novels an ...
and
Expansive Poetry. It is the largest poetry-only conference in America
[ and possibly the world as well as the only conference which focuses on traditional craft.][Timpane, John]
Conference draws poets not for reading, but for crafting
" ''The Philadelphia Inquirer
''The Philadelphia Inquirer'' is a daily newspaper headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The newspaper's circulation is the largest in both the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the Delaware Valley metropolitan region of Southeastern Pennsy ...
''. Sun, Jun. 6, 2010.
History
The conference was founded in 1995 by West Chester professor Michael Peich and poet Dana Gioia
Michael Dana Gioia (; born December 24, 1950) is an American poet, literary critic, literary translator, and essayist.
Since the early 1980s, Gioia has been considered part of the literary movements within American poetry known as New Forma ...
with 85 poets and scholars in attendance.[Hitchner, Earle]
Verse That Sings in Many Styles
" ''The Wall Street Journal
''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...
''. June 17, 2010 The original core faculty members included Annie Finch
Annie Finch (born October 31, 1956) is an American poet, critic, editor, translator, playwright, and performer and the editor of the first major anthology of literature about abortion. Her poetry is known for its often incantatory use of rhythm, ...
, R. S. Gwynn
Robert Samuel "Sam" Gwynn (born 1948, Eden, North Carolina) is an American poet and anthologist associated with New Formalism.
Life
Gwynn is married and lives in Beaumont, Texas. He graduated from Davidson College in 1969, where he won the Ver ...
, Mark Jarman
Mark F. Jarman (born in Mount Sterling, Kentucky) is an American poet and critic often identified with the New Narrative branch of the New Formalism; he was co-editor with Robert McDowell of '' The Reaper'' throughout the 1980s. Centennial Pro ...
, Robert McDowell, and Timothy Steele
Timothy Steele (born January 22, 1948) is an American poet, who generally writes in meter and rhyme. His early poems, which began appearing in the 1970s in such magazines as ''Poetry, The Southern Review'', and X. J. Kennedy's ''Counter/Measures' ...
. While some of these faculty still return regularly to teach, the faculty has expanded in recent years to include Kim Addonizio
Kim Addonizio (July 31, 1954) is an American poet and novelist.
Life
Addonizio was born in Washington, D.C., United States. She is the daughter of tennis champion Pauline Betz and sports writer Bob Addie (born Addonizio).
She briefly attended ...
, Rhina Espaillat
Rhina Polonia Espaillat (born January 20, 1932, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic) is a bilingual Dominican-American poet and translator who is affiliated with the literary movement known as New Formalism in American poetry. She has published e ...
, B. H. Fairchild
B.H. Fairchild (born 1942) is an American poet and former college professor. His most recent book is ''An Ordinary Life'' (W.W. Norton, 2023), and his poems have appeared in literary journals and magazines including ''The New Yorker'', ''The Pari ...
, Rachel Hadas
Rachel Hadas (born November 8, 1948) is an American poet, teacher, essayist, and translator. Her most recent essay collection is ''Piece by Piece: Selected Prose'' (Paul Dry Books, 2021), and her most recent poetry collection is ''Love and Dread'' ...
, Molly Peacock
Molly Peacock (born Buffalo, New York 1947) is an American-Canadian poet, essayist, biographer and speaker, whose multi-genre literary life also includes memoir, short fiction, and a one-woman show.
Career
Peacock's latest book is Flower Diary ...
, Mary Jo Salter
Mary Jo Salter (born August 15, 1954) is an American poet, a co-editor of The ''Norton Anthology of Poetry'' and a professor in the Writing Seminars program at Johns Hopkins University.
Life
Salter was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan and was ...
, A. E. Stallings, and many other widely published New Formalists.
Starting in 1999, the conference's program began including an art song concert.[
In 2003, Gioia stepped down as co-director of the conference in order to become chairman of the ]National Endowment for the Arts
The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal ...
.
The 2010 conference was the 16th and last year with Peich as director before he retired and passed the position to Kim Bridgford
Kim Suzanne Bridgford (August 8, 1959 – June 28, 2020) was an American poet, writer, critic, and academic. In her poetry, she wrote primarily in traditional forms, particularly sonnets. She was the director of Poetry by the Sea: A Global Conf ...
.[ By this time, the conference attendance had increased to 300 poets and poetry scholars.][ That year's concert of art song featured Natalie Merchant, who sung the poetry of various poets of the past.][ On June 12, the last day of the conference, the Queen's Birthday Honours 2010 were announced, including British comic poet ]Wendy Cope
Wendy Cope (born 21 July 1945) is a contemporary English poet. She read history at St Hilda's College, Oxford. She now lives in Ely, Cambridgeshire, with her husband, the poet Lachlan Mackinnon.
Biography
Cope was born in Erith in Kent (no ...
's appointment as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire.Wendy Cope Interviewed at West Chester Poetry Conference
/ref>
R. S. Gwynn
Robert Samuel "Sam" Gwynn (born 1948, Eden, North Carolina) is an American poet and anthologist associated with New Formalism.
Life
Gwynn is married and lives in Beaumont, Texas. He graduated from Davidson College in 1969, where he won the Ver ...
was named Program Director in September, 2015. His innovations included the initiation of a "Great Debates" series, the first of which, "Poetry or Verse?" was conducted by the poets James Matthew Wilson
James is a common English language surname and given name:
*James (name), the typically masculine first name James
* James (surname), various people with the last name James
James or James City may also refer to:
People
* King James (disambiguat ...
and Robert Archambeau
Robert Archambeau (18 April 1933 — 25 April 2022) was a Canadian ceramic artist and potter. He also had an academic career in post-secondary art studies.
Personal history
Born in Toledo, Ohio, United States in 1933, he immigrated to C ...
.
Jesse Waters was named Program Director in January, 2018.
2020 saw no conference.
Awards given
Every year, the WCU Poetry Conference gives out three Iris N. Spencer Poetry Awards, the most notable one being the nationally-competitive Donald Justice Poetry Prize. The other two were given to recognize local regional undergraduate work in the Delaware Valley of Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...
until 2012, when they were expanded to become nationally-competitive prizes.
Keynote speakers
*1995
File:1995 Events Collage V2.png, From left, clockwise: O.J. Simpson is acquitted of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman from the year prior in "The Trial of the Century" in the United States; The Great Hanshin earthquake str ...
— Richard Wilbur
Richard Purdy Wilbur (March 1, 1921 – October 14, 2017) was an American poet and literary translator. One of the foremost poets of his generation, Wilbur's work, composed primarily in traditional forms, was marked by its wit, charm, and gentle ...
* 1996 — Donald Justice
Donald Rodney Justice (August 12, 1925 – August 6, 2004) was an American teacher of writing and poet who won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1980.
In summing up Justice's career, David Orr wrote, "In most ways, Justice was no different from a ...
*1997
File:1997 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The movie set of ''Titanic'', the highest-grossing movie in history at the time; '' Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone'', is published; Comet Hale-Bopp passes by Earth and becomes one of ...
— Anthony Hecht
Anthony Evan Hecht (January 16, 1923 – October 20, 2004) was an American poet. His work combined a deep interest in form with a passionate desire to confront the horrors of 20th century history, with the World War II, Second World War, in which ...
*1998
1998 was designated as the ''International Year of the Ocean''.
Events January
* January 6 – The ''Lunar Prospector'' spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon, and later finds evidence for frozen water, in soil in permanently s ...
— Wendy Cope
Wendy Cope (born 21 July 1945) is a contemporary English poet. She read history at St Hilda's College, Oxford. She now lives in Ely, Cambridgeshire, with her husband, the poet Lachlan Mackinnon.
Biography
Cope was born in Erith in Kent (no ...
*1999
File:1999 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The funeral procession of King Hussein of Jordan in Amman; the 1999 İzmit earthquake kills over 17,000 people in Turkey; the Columbine High School massacre, one of the first major school shoot ...
— X. J. Kennedy
*2000
File:2000 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Protests against Bush v. Gore after the 2000 United States presidential election; Heads of state meet for the Millennium Summit; The International Space Station in its infant form as seen from S ...
— Louis Simpson
Louis Aston Marantz Simpson (March 27, 1923 – September 14, 2012) was an American poet born in Jamaica. He won the 1964 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his work ''At the End of the Open Road''.
Life and career
Simpson was born in Jamaica, the so ...
* 2001 — Marilyn Nelson
Marilyn Nelson (born April 26, 1946) is an American poet, translator, and children's book author. She is a professor emeritus at the University of Connecticut, and the former poet laureate of Connecticut, She is a winner of the Ruth Lilly Poetr ...
* 2002 — Nina Cassian
Nina Cassian (pen name of Renée Annie Cassian-Mătăsaru; 27 November 1924, in Galați – 14 April 2014, in New York City) was a Romanian poet, children's book writer, translator, journalist, accomplished pianist and composer, and film critic. ...
* 2003 — William Jay Smith
William Jay Smith (April 22, 1918 – August 18, 2015) was an American poet. He was appointed the nineteenth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1968 to 1970.
Life
William Jay Smith was born in Winnfield, Loui ...
* 2004 — Dana Gioia
Michael Dana Gioia (; born December 24, 1950) is an American poet, literary critic, literary translator, and essayist.
Since the early 1980s, Gioia has been considered part of the literary movements within American poetry known as New Forma ...
* 2005 — Anne Stevenson
* 2006 — James Fenton
James is a common English language surname and given name:
*James (name), the typically masculine first name James
* James (surname), various people with the last name James
James or James City may also refer to:
People
* King James (disambiguat ...
* 2007 — Kay Ryan
Kay Ryan (born September 21, 1945) is an American poet and educator. She has published seven volumes of poetry and an anthology of selected and new poems. From 2008 to 2010 she was the sixteenth United States Poet Laureate. In 2011 she was named ...
*2008
File:2008 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Lehman Brothers went bankrupt following the Subprime mortgage crisis; Cyclone Nargis killed more than 138,000 in Myanmar; A scene from the opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing; ...
— Richard Wilbur
Richard Purdy Wilbur (March 1, 1921 – October 14, 2017) was an American poet and literary translator. One of the foremost poets of his generation, Wilbur's work, composed primarily in traditional forms, was marked by its wit, charm, and gentle ...
* 2009 — Donald Hall
Donald Andrew Hall Jr. (September 20, 1928 – June 23, 2018) was an American poet, writer, editor and literary critic. He was the author of over 50 books across several genres from children's literature, biography, memoir, essays, and includin ...
* 2010 — Rhina Espaillat
Rhina Polonia Espaillat (born January 20, 1932, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic) is a bilingual Dominican-American poet and translator who is affiliated with the literary movement known as New Formalism in American poetry. She has published e ...
* 2011 — Robert Pinsky
Robert Pinsky (born October 20, 1940) is an American poet, essayist, literary critic, and translator. From 1997 to 2000, he served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. Pinsky is the author of nineteen books, most o ...
*2012
File:2012 Events Collage V3.png, From left, clockwise: The passenger cruise ship Costa Concordia lies capsized after the Costa Concordia disaster; Damage to Casino Pier in Seaside Heights, New Jersey as a result of Hurricane Sandy; People gat ...
Christian Wiman
Christian Wiman is an American poet and editor born in 1966 and raised in the small west Texas town of Snyder. He graduated from Washington and Lee University and has taught at Northwestern University, Stanford University, Lynchburg College in Vi ...
*2013
File:2013 Events Collage V2.png, From left, clockwise: Edward Snowden becomes internationally famous for leaking classified NSA wiretapping information; Typhoon Haiyan kills over 6,000 in the Philippines and Southeast Asia; The Dhaka garment fa ...
Julia Alvarez
Julia Alvarez (born March 27, 1950) is an American New Formalist poet, novelist, and essayist. She rose to prominence with the novels ''How the García Girls Lost Their Accents'' (1991), '' In the Time of the Butterflies'' (1994), and ''Yo!'' ...
*2014
File:2014 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Stocking up supplies and personal protective equipment (PPE) for the Western African Ebola virus epidemic; Citizens examining the ruins after the Chibok schoolgirls kidnapping; Bundles of wat ...
Natasha Trethewey
Natasha Trethewey (born April 26, 1966) is an American poet who was appointed United States Poet Laureate in 2012 and again in 2013. She won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for her 2006 collection ''Native Guard'', and she is a former Poet L ...
*2016
File:2016 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Bombed-out buildings in Ankara following the 2016 Turkish coup d'état attempt; the Impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, impeachment trial of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff; Damaged houses duri ...
Sir Andrew Motion
Sir Andrew Motion (born 26 October 1952) is an English poet, novelist, and biographer, who was Poet Laureate from 1999 to 2009. During the period of his laureateship, Motion founded the Poetry Archive, an online resource of poems and audio reco ...
*2017
File:2017 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: The War Against ISIS at the Battle of Mosul (2016-2017); aftermath of the Manchester Arena bombing; The Solar eclipse of August 21, 2017 ("Great American Eclipse"); North Korea tests a s ...
A.E. Stallings
*2018
File:2018 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: The 2018 Winter Olympics opening ceremony in PyeongChang, South Korea; Protests erupt following the Assassination of Jamal Khashoggi; March for Our Lives protests take place across the Unit ...
Timothy Steele
Timothy Steele (born January 22, 1948) is an American poet, who generally writes in meter and rhyme. His early poems, which began appearing in the 1970s in such magazines as ''Poetry, The Southern Review'', and X. J. Kennedy's ''Counter/Measures' ...
*2019
File:2019 collage v1.png, From top left, clockwise: Hong Kong protests turn to widespread riots and civil disobedience; House of Representatives votes to adopt articles of impeachment against Donald Trump; CRISPR gene editing first used to experim ...
David Yezzi
David Dalton Yezzi (born 1966) is an American poet, editor, actor, and professor. He currently teaches poetry in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University.
Life
Yezzi was born in Albany, New York[2020
2020 was heavily defined by the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to global social and economic disruption, mass cancellations and postponements of events, worldwide lockdowns and the largest economic recession since the Great Depression in t ...]
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See also
* Mezzo Cammin
''Mezzo Cammin'' is a semiannual online literary journal devoted to formalist poetry by contemporary women as well as to bring attention back to work that was more famous in previous eras. The journal's title comes from Judith Moffett's poem "Mezz ...
, a journal of formalist poetry by women, associated with the WCU Poetry Conference
* Poetry
Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings i ...
* American poetry
American poetry refers to the poetry of the United States. It arose first as efforts by American colonists to add their voices to English poetry in the 17th century, well before the constitutional unification of the Thirteen Colonies (although ...
* List of years in poetry
This article gives a chronological list of years in poetry (descending order). These pages supplement the List of years in literature pages with a focus on events in the history of poetry.
21st century in poetry
2020s
* 2023 in poetry
* 20 ...
External links
*
References
{{reflist
Poetry organizations
Cultural conferences
West Chester University
Annual events in Pennsylvania
Recurring events established in 1995
1995 establishments in Pennsylvania