ECU Poetry Forum
est. 1965
Good poetry has discernible qualities. It makes maximum use of figurative language, and what is said emerges from the drama of the imagery. What it says has a greater impact because it emerges subtly, rather than in the form of direct statements. -- Peter Makuck
History
The ECU Poetry Forum has been in continuous existence since its founding in 1965 by Vernon Ward. With growing numbers of students and townspeople writing poetry, Ward saw a need for a workshop where writers could read their work and receive both encouragement and criticism.
Peter Makuck, English Department faculty member and editor of Tar River Poetry, directed the bi-monthly meetings of the Forum after Vernon Ward retired in 1978. After Makuck's retirement in May 2006, Luke Whisnant became the Forum's faculty advisor.
The ECU Poetry Forum has received financial support from both the English Department and the Student Government Association. With allocations from the SGA, the Poetry Forum has sponsored the readings of visiting poets of national reputation.
National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize winners like William Stafford, Carolyn Kizer, and Louis Simpson head a long list of distinguished poets who have visited ECU to give readings and free workshops that were open to the public. Other visiting poets have included Betty Adcock, Lucille Clifton, Lawrence Lieberman, Patricia Goedicke, James Dickey, Robert Creeley, Brendan Galvin, A.R. Ammons, and Samuel Hazo.
40th Anniversary Celebration
Wednesday, February 2, 2005
with special guest John Balaban
(poet, fiction/non-fiction writer, literary translator)
- Workshop - 3-4:30pm - Mendenhall, Great Room 1
- Reading - 7:30pm - Bate 1032
John Balaban is the author of eleven books of poetry and prose, including four volumes which together have won The Academy of American Poets' Lamont prize, a National Poetry Series Selection, and two nominations for the National Book Award. His Locusts at the Edge of Summer: New and Selected Poems won the 1998 William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America. He is the 2001-2004 National Artist for the Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society. In 2003, he was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship.
In addition to writing poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, he is a translator of Vietnamese poetry, and a past president of the American Literary Translators Association.
His books on Vietnam include Ca Dao Vietnam: Vietnamese Folk Poetry, Vietnam: The Land We Never Knew (with the photographer, Geoffrey Clifford), Remembering Heaven's Face, a memoir, and Vietnam: A Traveler's Literary Companion (co-edited with Nguyen Qui Duc), as well as his acclaimed Spring Essence: The Poetry of Ho Xuan Huong.
Balaban is Poet-in-Residence and Professor of English at North Carolina State University in Raleigh.
For information about Vietnamese in the ancient script: www.nomfoundation.org
ECU Sponsors
Poetry Forum, Department of English, Phi Kappa Phi
Media
ECU News Release - January 12, 2005
The East Carolinian - January 27, 2005
"ECU Poetry Forum: Ode to Honest Verse - Campus writers group celebrates 40 years of open exchanges, criticism and praise." Marion P. Blackburn. East: The Magazine of East Carolina University (Spring 2005): 16-17.
