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-   -   Yet more bad West Chester news... (https://www.ablemuse.com/erato/showthread.php?t=29042)

Michael Juster 01-11-2018 06:35 AM

Yet more bad West Chester news...
 
https://twitter.com/amjuster/status/951427736740007936

Catherine Chandler 01-11-2018 08:39 AM

Whom did they appoint, Mike? I can't see the announcement.

Edited: Oh, I see your recent reply. Jesse Waters.

Michael Juster 01-11-2018 10:12 AM

I've just gotten off the phone from a long conversation with the interim dean of WCU. I am extremely unhappy with that conversation, and the only glimmer of good news I have is that the person the interim dean hired is temporary through this year's conference.

If you care about the WCU conference, think about contacting WCU & telling them that they need to find someone committed to formal poetry to try to repair this new mess they created.

Quincy Lehr 01-11-2018 10:53 AM

There are only so many times the school can f**k up the thing before large numbers of people stop showing up. I'm not going to say I'll never go again (after all, Sam got some of us back after the whole Kim debacle), but as my email as to what in the name of Jesus they expect to do with the Justice Prize (which I was set to judge), which lacks a publisher--kind of a big deal for a book prize--I have to wonder. [Edited—it was worse than I thought.]

Over time, one of the things that I've come to appreciate the way that Mike Peich set the thing up was that it had one foot in the academic po-biz and one foot in the non-academic parallel world of workshops, writers' groups, and reading series (the Powows, Carmine St. Metrics, etc.). I wonder if that will last.

Michael Juster 01-11-2018 11:03 AM

Quincy, you & I disagree on so many things, but I think we can safely agree that you & I--and almost none of us--appreciated Mike Peich's hard work & creative judgment as much as we should have.

I am not planning on attending.

R. S. Gwynn 01-11-2018 11:41 AM

The Poetry House has been cleaned out to house temporary offices. All books and records of the Poetry Conference and Poetry Center have been placed in storage elsewhere at the university.

marly youmans 01-11-2018 11:48 AM

Michael, thanks for the alert. Very sorry to hear this--bad for the school and the conference. I've only been twice (under Kim's reign, once to be on a panel, once to run one) but enjoyed both meeting people and going to talks. And I know that many people love it and attend regularly.

Who do you think is the right person to contact to lodge protest and suggestions?

Richard Meyer 01-11-2018 01:36 PM

West Chester Redux.

I've never attended the conference, but I have followed the machinations swirling around it in recent years. One version of an old maxim comes to mind: Don't worry about that dead horse, just keep loading the wagon.

Perhaps the wise course of action for poetic freight handlers is to cease in their efforts and just walk away.

Richard

Michael Juster 01-11-2018 02:25 PM

Richard:

I can't quite bring myself to agree or disagree---I'm torn.

Mike


PS everyone: I'm heading out shortly for a week off the grid, so please don't read meaning into silence. Thanks!

Susan McLean 01-11-2018 02:26 PM

This is terrible news. No one who knew the conference at its best can do anything but regret its dissolution. Other conferences now compete for the poets who used to attend West Chester, so those poets are not left without any options. But the friends that I met at West Chester will not all attend the same conference in the future, so I cannot count on seeing most of them in any one spot. The size of the West Chester conference made for a wide range of panels and workshops, and I don't think any of the competing conferences can match it at that level. I still value the contact and exchange of ideas at a conference on formal poetry, so I will not give up attending one each year. That conference will probably not be at West Chester from here on. I will miss it.

Susan


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