Bucknell Seminar for Younger Poets

Stadler Center for Poetry


In June 2010, the Stadler Center will conduct the twenty-sixth 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 Robin Becker, Linda Gregg, Terrance Hayes, James Harms, Dana Levin, Mary Ruefle, Gerald Stern, David St. John, 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 2010 staff will include Seminar Director G.C. Waldrep, Associate Director Deirdre O'Connor, and Stadler Fellows Will Schutt and K.A. Hays. Visiting poets Laurie Kutchins and Eleni Sikelianos will complete the lineup.

The 2010 Seminar will be held June 6 - June 27. Applications for the 2010 Seminar must be postmarked by Monday, February 1, 2010.

For complete application instructions, please click here.

Click here for Frequently Asked Questions about the program.


 

VISITING POETS, JUNE 2010

For the 2010 Seminar, visiting poets Laurie Kutchins and Eleni Sikelianos will join director G. C. Waldrep and staff members Deirdre O'Connor, Will Schutt, and K. A. Hays. (Note: Dean Young was originally scheduled to participate in this year's Seminar, but he has cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances).

Laurie Kutchins is the author of three books of poetry, Slope of the Child Everlasting, The Night Path, and Between Towns. Her poems have been published widely in anthologies and in such magazines as The New Yorker, Georgia Review, and Kenyon Review, Southern Review, Poetry, and Ploughshares. Her essays have appeared in the anthologies A Tough and Tender Kinship and A Place on Earth: Nature Writers from North America and Australia, and in literary journals. Kutchins has served residencies at MacDowell, the Ucross Foundation, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and has received many grants and awards. A native of Wyoming, she now lives in Virginia and teaches creative writing at James Madison University.

Eleni Sikelianos is the author of six books of poetry, most recently Body Clock and The California Poem, as well as a hybrid memoir, The Book of Jon. She has received awards from the NEA, the Fulbright Fellowships, the National Poetry Series, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and other organizations. Her work has been translated into a dozen languages, and she has participated in literary festivals in France, Spain, Slovenia, and Canada. Sikelianos has collaborated with musicians and visual artists, and performs a leading role in two films by Ed Bowes. At present, she directs the Creative Writing Program at the University of Denver. She also teaches in Naropa University's Summer Writing Program and in New England College's MFA program.


STAFF POETS

G. C. Waldrep, Director
Waldrep is the author of Goldbeater's Skin (winner of the 2003 Colorado Prize for Poetry), Disclamor (2007), and Archicembalo (winner of the 2008 Dorset Prize, forthcoming in 2009). His poems have appeared in Poetry, Ploughshares, Kenyon Review, Boston Review, New England Review, New American Writing, and other journals.  His work has received awards from the Poetry Society of America, the Campbell Corner Foundation, and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. He held a 2007 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Literature. At Bucknell, he teaches creative writing and directs the Bucknell Seminar for Younger Poets.

 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 BucknellWritingCenter and associate director of the Bucknell Seminar for Younger Poets.
 


Will Schutt, Seminar Associate
Will Schutt is a poet and translator from New York City. He earned his BA from Oberlin College and his MFA from Hollins University, where he was a teaching fellow and editorial assistant at The Hollins Critic. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in such journals as Faultline, FIELD, Harvard Review and The Southern Review. In 2003, he co-founded Verso, a culture and arts magazine based in Siena, Italy, where he was a contributing editor and translator until 2007. He guest edited the “Focus” section of the summer 2008 issue of A Public Space, which featured a selection of his translations of contemporary Italian fiction. He is also the recipient of the 2008 Gertrude Claytor Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets.
 

 K. A. Hays, Seminar Associate
A native of southeast Pennsylvania, K. A. Hays is the author of Dear Apocalypse (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2009). Poems from the book appear or are forthcoming in Best American Poetry 2009, The Yale Anthology of Younger American Poetry, The Missouri Review, Best New Poets 2007, and Southern Review. Her verse translations and fiction have appeared in Gulf Coast, Hudson Review, Fugue, and elsewhere. An MFA graduate of the literary arts program at Brown, she currently holds the Stadler Emerging Writer Fellowship.