West Chester University Appoints A New Poetry Center Director

Press release from West Chester University:

WEST CHESTER UNIVERSITY APPOINTS A NEW POETRY CENTER DIRECTOR

Jen Bacon, Dean of the College of Arts and Humanities says, “We are thrilled with
the appointment of Dr. Pollard as our new Poetry Center Director. Pollard has 20 years
of experience as a poet, scholar, critic, and teacher, and we look forward to the
energy and expertise she will bring to the position.”

A published poet and West Chester University faculty member since 1999, Pollard says,
“Poetry unites. It can help us understand what we’ve been through and help people
articulate their lives. It can play an important role in helping us discover who we
are. I look forward to passing along my love for poetry to students, and to encouraging
greater student participation at poetry events on West Chester University’s campus.”

Pollard specializes in African American historical novels, African American literary
theory and criticism, the Black Arts Movement, womanist and feminist criticism and
theory, and twentieth century American Poetry and Poetics[YH1] . She completed fellowships
at Cave Canem: A Home for Black Poetry, and after, published her first poems, “whateva
you do” and “Call and Response.”

Pollard has organized numerous public readings and craft talks at West Chester University,
bringing poets like Natasha Trethewey to campus the year that she won the Pulitzer
Prize. She regularly attended the annual West Chester University Poetry Conference
and [YH2] was a founding board member for Poetry by the Sea, an annual global poetry
conference on the Long Island Sound.

Pollard has performed poetry readings on West Chester University’s campus and other
campuses, including the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts Residency in Poetry,
where she completed a fellowship in October of 2019. Her 2016 poetry collection, Outsiders, was
the winner of the 2015 Susan K. Collins/Mississippi Valley Chapbook Contest. This
year, she and two co-editors will see the publication of Show Us Your Papers! An anthology
of 80 Poets.

About the West Chester University Poetry Center - The West Chester University Poetry Center offers a variety of programs and activities
that help expand its mission of bringing poetry to an ever-widening audience. Since
its inception in 2000, the goals of the Poetry Center have remained consistent: furthering
the study and appreciation of poetry, providing the nation's finest instruction in
the diverse traditional techniques of poetry, providing an international forum for
the discussion of poetic form and prosody, training teachers in the art of teaching
poetry and poetic form, and fostering the necessary dialogue between practicing poets
and critics in a culture that too often separates them. The Poetry Center also recognizes
poetic achievement through the Iris N. Spencer Awards, which celebrate emerging poets
at the undergraduate level, and through the Donald Justice Poetry Prize, which goes
to an unpublished book-length collection of poems.

This press release was produced by West Chester University. The views expressed here are the author’s own.