West Chester University: West Chester University's Poetry Center To Host Two Public Events This Fall

Press release from West Chester University:

October 28, 2021

Transformation: Evolving Approaches to Teaching, Poetry and the Natural World

Finch is the author of seven books of poetry including Eve, Calendars, Among the Goddesses, and Spells: New and Selected Poems (Wesleyan University Press.) Finch’s poetry has appeared in Poetry, The Paris Review, The New York Times, and The Penguin Book of Twentieth-Century American Poetry. Her books about poetry include The Body of Poetry and A Poet’s Craft: A Comprehensive Guide to Making and Sharing Your Poetry.  Annie holds a Ph.D from Stanford University and teaches online classes on poetry
at anniefinch.com and in Poetry Witch Community. She is passionate about helping bring
the pleasure and power of rhythm and meter back into poetry.

Eve Calendars, Among the Goddesses, Spells: New and Selected Poems Poetry The Paris Review, The New York Times, The Penguin Book of Twentieth-Century American Poetry. The Body of Poetry A Poet’s Craft: A Comprehensive Guide to Making and Sharing Your Poetry.

Transformation: Evolving Approaches to Teaching, Poetry and the Natural World will feature workshop leaders, presenters and panelists of international renown who
will offer new approaches to teaching poetry with a focus on the natural world.

Transformation: Evolving Approaches to Teaching, Poetry and the Natural World

WCU Poetry Center Director Cherise Pollard says, “During the lockdown, many of us
became even more aware of our symbiotic relationship with nature. Being on perpetual
stay-cation inspired some to garden. Breaking away from commuting and routines helped
all of us to appreciate the impact of our carbon footprint. Unexpected opportunities
to socialize outdoors inspired us to reset our relationship with the more-than-human
world. Returning to face-to-face instruction gives us the opportunity to use this
awareness to shape our approach to teaching poetry.”

The keynote speaker and featured reader is Anna Lena Phillips Bell. She is the author
of Ornament, winner of the Vassar Miller Poetry Prize, A Pocket Book of Forms, a fine-press guide to poetic forms, and the chapbook Smaller Songs, from St. Brigid Press. Her poems appear in journals including the Southern Review, the Sewanee Review, 32 Poems, and Subtropics, and in anthologies including A Literary Field Guide to Southern Appalachia, Counter-Desecration: A Glossary for Writing within the Anthropocene, and Gracious: Poems from the 21st Century South. She has served since 2013 as the editor of Ecotone, the award-winning literary magazine
of place, and is an editor of Lookout Books and a contributing editor for American Scientist magazine. The recipient of a North Carolina Arts Council Fellowship in literature,
she is the 2019–2022 Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poet for eastern North Carolina.
She teaches in the creative writing department at UNC Wilmington, and calls ungendered
Appalachian square dances in North Carolina and beyond.

Ornament  A Pocket Book of Forms Smaller Songs Southern Review Sewanee Review, 32 Poems Subtropics A Literary Field Guide to Southern Appalachia, Counter-Desecration: A Glossary for Writing within the Anthropocene Gracious: Poems from the 21st Century South American Scientist

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.