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East Carolina University News Services
 
For immediate release
 
Contact: Dawn Wainwright, wainwrightd@ecu.edu

Telephone: (252) 328-4090
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Scholar to speak at ECU exhibit’s closing reception

GREENVILLE, N.C. (6/5/2009) The faculty and staff of Joyner Library’s Special Collections Department at East Carolina University will host a closing presentation and reception for the A.R. Ammons Poetry and Art Exhibit on June 29.
 
Visiting scholar Robert M. West, associate professor of English at Mississippi State University, will present, “‘The Shape/Things Will Take’: Looking Ahead to the Complete Poems of A.R. Ammons.” West’s talk will complete his weeklong research stint at ECU.
 
The A.R. Ammons exhibit is drawn from material given to the Thomas Harriot College of Arts and Sciences by Reid and Susan Overcash. The couple acquired the materials from Stuart Wright, an expatriate North Carolinian and Ammons’s longtime publisher and friend, who had collected it over many years. Reid Overcash, an ECU alumnus, and Wright were childhood friends, born and raised in Roxboro in the Piedmont region of North Carolina.
 
The Overcashes donated the Ammons Papers to the Special Collections Department of the Joyner Library, which has curatorial responsibility for the collection. They also provided funds for the processing and maintenance of the Ammons Papers.
 
The presentation will be held on June 29 at 3 p.m. in Administrative Conference Room 2409, Joyner Library, second floor. The final viewing of the exhibit will begin at 4 p.m. in the Special Collections Department on the library’s fourth floor.  Joyner faculty and staff will provide refreshments. This event is free and open to the public.