Bucknell Seminar for Younger Poets

In June 2012, the Stadler Center will conduct the twenty-seventh annual Seminar for Younger Poets. Held for three weeks in June, the Seminar provides an extended opportunity for undergraduate poets to write and to be guided by established poets. Staff and visiting poets conduct writing workshops and offer lecture/discussions, present readings of their own work, and are available for individual conferences. In the past, such poets as Linda Gregg, Terrance Hayes, Dana Levin, Mary Ruefle, Gerald Stern, David St. John, Arthur Sze, and Michael Waters have served as visiting poets. Numerous readings provide the participants with the opportunity to hear and be heard by their peers. Applicants compete for ten places in the Seminar, all of which come with fellowships. Fellowships include tuition, housing in campus apartments, and meals. Accepted students are responsible only for their travel to Bucknell and a modest library deposit. A limited number of travel scholarships are available on the basis of need. The 2012 staff will include Seminar Director G.C. Waldrep, Associate Director Deirdre O'Connor, and Stadler Fellows Jamaal May and Diana Park. Visiting poets Rick Barot and Brigit Pegeen Kelly will complete the lineup.

The 2012 Seminar will be held June 10 - July 1. The application deadline is January 31, 2012. For eligibility and application requirements, and to submit an application, please use the SCP Application Portal page, at right. For Frequently Asked Questions about the application process, click here.

 

 

VISITING POETS, JUNE 2012

For the 2012 Seminar, visiting poets Rick Barot and Brigit Pegeen Kelly will join director G. C. Waldrep and staff members Deirdre O'Connor, Jamaal May and Diana Park.

Rick Barot attended Wesleyan University and The Iowa Writers' Workshop. He has published two books of poetry with Sarabande Books, The Darker Fall (2002), and Want (2008), which was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and winner of the 2009 Grub Street Book Prize. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Artist Trust of Washington, the Civitella Ranieri, and Stanford University, where he was a Wallace E. Stegner Fellow and a Jones Lecturer. His poems and essays have appeared in numerous publications, including Poetry, The Paris Review, The New Republic, Ploughshares, Tin House, The Kenyon Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and The Threepenny Review. His work has been included in over a dozen anthologies, including Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century, The Swallow Anthology of New American Poets, and Asian-American Poetry: The Next Generation. He lives in Tacoma, Washington and is an associate professor of English at Pacific Lutheran University. For the last ten years, he has been on the poetry faculty of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.

 

 

Brigit Pegeen Kelly has published three books of poetry, To the Place of Trumpets (Yale University Press, 1988), selected by James Merrill for the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize, Song (BOA Editions, Ltd., 1995), winner of the Lamont Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets and, The Orchard, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Award, and the Pulitzer Prize. Additional awards and honors include a "Discovery" / The Nation award, the Witter Bynner Prize from the Academy of Arts and Letters, the Cecil Hemley Award from the Poetry Society of America, and fellowships from the Whiting Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, and the Illinois Arts Council. In 2008, Brigit Pegeen Kelly was awarded the 2008 Academy Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets. Her work has appeared in many anthologies and literary magazines, including The Nation, The Yale Review, New England Review, Poetry, The Antioch Review, The Massachusetts Review, The Southern Review, five Pushcart Prize volumes, and six volumes of The Best American Poetry. Kelly, who has taught for many years primarily at the University of Illinois, has also taught at the University of California at Irvine, Purdue University, Warren Wilson College, and numerous writers' conferences. In 2002 the University of Illinois awarded her both humanities and campus-wide awards for excellence in teaching.

 

 


STAFF POETS

G. C. Waldrep, Director
Waldrep is the author of four full-length collections: Goldbeater's Skin (winner of the 2003 Colorado Prize for Poetry); Disclamor (2007); Archicembalo (2009, winner of the Dorset Prize from Tupelo Press); and, in collaboration with John Gallaher, Your Father on the Train of Ghosts (BOA Editions, 2011). His work has received awards from the Poetry Society of America, the Campbell Corner Foundation, and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, as well as a Pushcart Prize and a 2007 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Literature. He holds a Ph.D. in American history from Duke University and an MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. At Bucknell, he is the Margaret Ley Professor of Poetry and Creative Writing and serves as Editor of West Branch. He also serves as Editor-at-Large for The Kenyon Review.

Deirdre O'Connor, Associate Director
O'Connor's book, Before the Blue Hour, was the winner of the Cleveland State Poetry Prize for 2001. Her work has appeared in Poetry, NaturalBridge, Painted Bride Quarterly, and other journals. Her new manuscript of poems, "The Mouth of the Sparrow," is seeking a publisher and has been a finalist for the National Poetry Series, the Beatrice Hawley Award, the Vassar Miller Prize, and others. She is director of the Bucknell Writing Center and associate director of the Bucknell Seminar for Younger Poets.


Jamaal May, Seminar Associate
Jamaal May is a Cave Canem Fellow, Callaloo Fellow, and graduate from Warren Wilson's MFA for writers. He is the author of a poetry chapbook, The God Engine (Pudding House Press, 2009), and editor of the Organic Weapon Arts Chapbook Series. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Callaloo, Indiana Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, Blackbird, and Verse Daily among other magazines and anthologies. May has received two scholarships to the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, an International Publication Prize from Atlanta Review, and was a finalist for the 2010 Ruth Lilly Fellowship. Recently, he was named the 2011-2012 Stadler Fellow at Bucknell University.

Diana Park, Seminar Associate
Diana Park grew up in New Jersey and Guam. She attended Johns Hopkins University and earned an MFA at Arizona State University, where she co-founded the International section of Hayden's Ferry Review. She is a recipient of a Kundiman fellowship, a Fulbright fellowship, and a MacDowell Colony residency. Her work has appeared in Tin House, Indiana Review, and elsewhere.