Further food for thought from today's Inquirer: "Troubled West Chester Poetry Conference Has a New Director"

Is there some public commitment to following the more inclusive trajectory into relevance that it sounds like Kim began as well as a promise to make right any wrongs done her? New formalism or whatever you wanna name the band has had problems getting gigs in the past because so many of the lyrics appealed only to the Whitebread Metal fans. The vague aftertaste from firing a female director under sketchy (sounding?) circumstances isn't exactly bait for youth.

Sam indicated to me that one of his explicit briefs is to increase the conference's diversity, which, [REDACTED] convinced me to say yes. Both conferences have a concomitant (and acknowledged) need to, for their own medium-term viability, to get their demographics a bit younger (that I'm still widely considered "young" despite being a month shy of turning forty, with the wrinkles on my forehead and aches in my joints to prove it, is a problem). In these days of declining enrollment, "jobless recovery," academic and general austerity, and a population that is going to get older in aggregate for the next twenty years or so, at least, this could be difficult.

I agree with you about New Formalism's race problem (while acknowledging Rafael Campo, Elizabeth Alexander, Marilyn Nelson, and others), and indeed I've written on it, but let's face it, minus scholarships, paying in the vicinity of $1,000 plus travel to go to a conference will skew the demographics, too. I say this not to criticize (I know for a fact that Poetry by the Sea isn't generating scads of wealth for Anna and Kim), but because it must play a role in the question of who goes and who doesn't.

http://www.facebook.com/poetryconfer...type=3&theater



Our workshop faculty so far:

Three-day Workshops

Melissa Balmain--Parody and Light Verse (team-taught)
Pat Myers
Frank Osen
Sarah Cortez--If the Form Fits...
Dick Davis--The Contemporary Sonnet
Mark Jarman--Poetic Narrative
Julie Kane--Forms of Repetition
Shirley Geok-lin Lim--Master Class
William Logan--The Iambic Line
Emily Moore--Teaching Poetry to the Young
John Whitworth--Rhyme and Reason
Caki Wilkinson--Voice & Character

One-day Workshops

Alfred Corn--Assembling Your Book
Dana Gioia--The Free Verse Line
Timothy Murphy--Short-line Verse

https://www.facebook.com/poetryconfe...rector?fref=nf

It looks like a great line-up, Sam. I definitely hope to be there.

Several panel topics have been proposed.


https://www.facebook.com/poetryconfe...rogramdirector

Quincy's post is somewhat misleading. There is a planned reorganization which would remove the conference from Dean Lori's remit, but it hasn't happened yet, so she's still in charge for now.

Similarly President Greg Weisenstein has announced his retirement effective March 31, but as most of the conference planning should have been done by then, it's hardly correct to say that a different president is presiding over it.

A more relevant question, perhaps, is what are the true motives for Dean Lori's disempowerment and the president's resignation?

On diversity, I don't see any recognizable African-American names on Sam's list, whereas Kim had started to get the big names to come to West Chester, and continues the work at Poetry by the Sea (Marilyn Nelson, Afaa Michael Weaver, Erica Dawson, Major Jackson, Rowan Ricardo Phillips, Patricia Smith, Allison Joseph. This isn't entirely Sam's fault, of course: he has asked a few that I know of, and they have refused. Again, the question to ask is why have they refused? I would suggest out of a sense of loyalty to the woman who was bringing diversity to West Chester.

As someone said to me wisely earlier today, "People find the narrative they need to support their desires."

And some people manage to trash the cake and eat it too. Such a prodigious appetite, of course, involves the requisite amount of boot-licking, even if the boot is one's own.

Nemo

In a scramble to repair the PR damage caused by the less than 100% positive Inquirer article, WCU have just sent out an email to former donors (of whom I am one, along with many of Kim's friends) which includes the following text:

On Behalf of Lori Vermeulen, Dean WCU College of Arts & Sciences

You and a Guest are Cordially Invited to Attend a Reception
Welcoming Sam Gwynn as Program Director for the WCU Poetry Center

Sunday, October 18, 2015
1 - 3 PM

So, I think it's clear which Dean is responsible for the resurrection of the conference at this point.

[redacted]