[Ed Shacklee]

I got a newsletter this morning informing me that the next WCU Poetry Conference will be held June 8-11, 2016.

Best,

Ed

[Quincy Lehr]

Grubby, business office-driven, and distasteful, especially with the other options available. Who they think would ever attend such a thing is a bit of a mystery. They don't seem to have an artistic director but are gushing over the new "College of Arts & Sciences Outreach Business Manager," which sounds exactly like one of those new administrative positions that drives up tuition and gets used as an excuse for why the English, History, and Modern Language departments won't get attrition hires and will have to make do with poorly paid adjuncts. Anyway, I know what I'm not doing next June.

[R. S. Gwynn]

Dear Poets and Friends of Poetry,

As past participants in the WCU Poetry Conference, we thought you would be interested in hearing about the Poetry Center activities during the past year and what’s in the pipeline so far for the upcoming year.

Student Poets – May I have the envelope please…
We are pleased to announce the Spencer poetry award winners. These students represent five schools from across the nation, including our very own West Chester University! As one of the Center’s goals is to recognize excellence in poetry and to encourage poetic achievement, we are extremely proud that we have been able to continue to support students through these award opportunities. First place winners of the Iris N. Spencer and Myong Cha Son Haiku awards receive a $1,500 prize. The second place winners of those awards and the winner of the Rhina P. Espaillat award each receive a $500 prize.

The winners are….

Award Name School
Iris N. Spencer-1st place Colleen Kochensparger University of Kentucky
Iris N. Spencer-2nd place Rachel Oestreich New Mexico State University
Myong Cha Son Haiku-1st place Katherine Kocotas West Chester University
Myong Cha Son Haiku-2nd place Andres Gomez University of Tulsa
Rhina P. Espaillat Angela Acosta Smith College

And the Beat Goes On…with Rhythm and Rhyme
The WCU Poetry Center’s Donald Justice Award provides an opportunity for poets to publish their original book-length collection of poems and to be recognized for their interpretation of traditional form.
 We are pleased to announce that 2015 Justice Prize winner Pat Valdata’s, Where No Man Can Touch, has been published. Jeff Hardin’s Restoring the Narrative is currently with the editor and will be published soon.
 Both winners will be honored publicly at the 2016 WCU Poetry Conference.

So, Mark Your Calendars…
The WCU Poetry Conference will be held June 8 - June 11, 2016.

Poetry Salons…
The WCU Poetry Center Poetry Salons provide an opportunity to engage community members with the art and craft of poetry.

On January 17, 2015, a wonderful salon was held at the home of Garrett and Muriel McDaniel featuring David Yezzi. To catch a glimpse of the magic of this evening, click here to see David reading Mother Carey’s Hen, accompanied by WCU student harpist Elyse Kistler.

We enjoyed another enchanting salon on May 31, 2015, hosted by Sterling and Carol Spears. More than forty individuals, both new friends and old joined together to enjoy the poetry of Ernest Hilbert.



New Faces…Welcome Ann Mascherino

During this year of transition, the Poetry Center has been restructured to better serve the poetry community and our students. Please welcome Ann Mascherino, who was appointed in March 2015 as the College of Arts & Sciences Outreach Business Manager. Ann has 19 years experience at WCU serving the PA Writing and Literature Project. She brings a wealth of experience with budgeting and event planning to the Poetry Center. In addition, part of Ann’s work with the PA Writing Project has been to support teachers in the teaching of poetry in schools. We are excited to tap into the many talents that Ann is bringing to us. Many thanks to Ann for her expertise and assistance as we retool and embark on the next chapter in our poetic book.

We hope to soon appoint an Artistic Director of the 2016 WCU Poetry Conference. More information about this will be forthcoming in our next communication.

Many thanks…
In parting, we offer our heartfelt appreciation to Ellie Byrom Haley who is completing her term of service on our Poetry Center Advisory Board. Ellie has brought to us both her enthusiasm for poetry and her expertise in communications. We are grateful that she is close by and able to continue to contribute to our activities. In fact, we expect that Ellie will be hosting our Fall Poetry Salon. More information on the Fall Salon will follow. Hope to see you there! If you are interested in being involved in our next Salon, please contact Ann Mascherino at amascherino@wcupa.edu.


[Quincy Lehr]

I got the same email--are we to intuit from this that long-term faculty are as out-of-the-loop as the rest of us?

[Michael Cantor]

I attended at least ten sessions in a row through the last one in 2014, have been a contributor, and didn't even get the e-mail. Not a good sign.

[Julie Kane]

I was a faculty member twice, in 2012 and 2013, and my notification about the 2016 conference came from the above email. To this date, nobody from WCU has initiated communications regarding the fate of my Justice Prize winning book (2009). After the center closed, I emailed Dean Lori V. about it, who said that I should contact the former Story Line Press director (Mike P.). I then emailed Mike P., who said that I should contact Lori V. I asked Lori V. if I could buy up any existing copies of my book, and she said she would look to see if any were lying around the office, when she got a chance (she never did). Meanwhile, the Story Line Press website had disappeared from the Web, and Amazon was listing my book as "out of stock." Those had been the only two ways to buy my book. Finally, not long ago, I heard from another Justice Prize winner that we could request the remaining copies of our SLP books from the person who was identified today as the new Business Manager. I emailed her, and she responded with a count of the number of books that remained and the unit price I could pay for them. I assume from all of the foregoing that WCU has abandoned the former Justice winners, and that all rights have reverted to us. P.S. "New" copies of the book are selling on Amazon for $96.96 and $251.80, this morning. This may be my new retirement plan.

[Quincy Lehr]

Here's my response to that email:

Due to the events of the past year, I have no desire to attend the West Chester Poetry Conference again, and I have no confidence that, were I to take leave of my senses and contribute money to the conference, it would go where intended, given WCU's publicly documented lack of financial probity.

Please remove me from your list and never contact me again.

Sincerely yours and with extreme prejudice,

Quincy R. Lehr

[R. S. Gwynn]

Please recall that the WCUPA Poetry Conference provided an annual "home" for formalists and many others for twenty years--there was nowhere else to go for what it offered. Despite the events of the last year or so, the university is due some gratitude for the past and some latitude for the future from those of us who have benefited from the conference.

[Catherine Chandler]

I received that email, having attended only once, in 2011.

What Julie reports is very disturbing. However, there is at least one other Justice Prize winner in the same predicament.

I can't see how there will be enough of a "market" for two large formal poetry conferences to survive, each being held within a period of one month.

[Julie Steiner]

Although I was never able to attend, I'm very grateful for the time and effort that went into a conference which I benefitted from vicariously for a very long time.

That said, I'm also dismayed that such a good thing was derailed so abruptly, without explanation...and apparently with significant administrative complacency--nay, arrogance--that the target audience would still regard the West Chester University Poetry Conference in the same way, if only out of habit, after this still-unexplained and very troubling hiatus.

Yes, I understand that there are legal and ethical reasons for the silence regarding what happened, but at the very least I expect to be compensated with promises of a truly spectacular event this year. And frankly, I'm not at all encouraged by the news that they STILL haven't got a Director hard at work planning the thing.

The reality is that formalist poets no longer have "nowhere else to go." If WCU wants my registration money, they're going to have to compete for it with other conferences.

I'm also frustrated with WCU because, after months of trying, I still haven't been able to purchase copies of the most recent Justice Award winning book. Yes, I can find second-hand copies (probably free review copies resold by cheap-ass reviewers), but I want the author to benefit financially from my purchase. I don't understand a business model in which a press carefully selects and publishes a wonderful manuscript that people want to buy, and then doesn't make it available for sale. Whether it's just breathtaking incompetence or active disrespect to both author and audience, that doesn't exactly endear the WCU staff to me, either.