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Brenna McLaughlin, AAUP
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bmclaughlin@aaupnet.org

NATIONAL POETRY MONTH

Poetry flourishes at university presses throughout nation

Kent State fosters emerging poets, young and old… radical and experimental voices from California … Southern Illinois commemorates National Poetry Month with new titles… Revered poets memorialized in prizes for new poetry

April 14, 2004 (New York, NY, and Washington, DC)—On Thursday evening, April 22, in Kent, Ohio, poets of all ages, from third graders to senior citizens, will stand on stage and participate in their first public reading. The reading – sponsored in part by Kent State University Press – is just one of the poetry programs initiated and supported by university presses all year long, all over the nation.

And it is another reminder as National Poetry Month’s annual April activities continue – with schools, libraries, bookstores, authors, and readers reflecting on the legacy and achievements of American poets – that much of the diversity, excellence, and innovation celebrated at this time can be traced to and found at university presses.

Most of the 125 member presses of the Association of American University Presses (www.aaupnet.org) publish poetry and scores also have long traditions of cultivating work by young poets, of sponsoring awards programs, and publishing work of regional importance.

At a time when economic pressures are forcing large commercial publishing houses to cut back or eliminate books of poetry from their catalogs of titles, university presses – with their nonprofit structure and many facing financial struggles of their own – continue to include poetry and support poets.

As one university press announces on its web site: "The University of Illinois Press has made a commitment to poetry in a time when most publishing decisions are made according to the bottom line. We can't measure such a commitment in financial terms, however. It is important that we publish poetry, so we do."
Illinois has more than 100 volumes of poetry in print and has been a publisher for the National Poetry Series since 1984, longer than any other. Poets published by Illinois include Jim Barnes, Mark Doty, Lynn Emanuel, and Michael S. Harper.

While university presses perform the same tasks as any commercial publisher (acquisition, development, design, marketing), they are distinguished by their nonprofit status and affiliation with their parent institution. As a group, they share a common mission: to publish work of scholarly, intellectual, or creative merit. Each press is also a key player in the more general network (scholars’ associations and research libraries) that makes scholarly endeavor possible.

A specific goal of the Kent State University Wick Poetry Program is to promote opportunities for emerging and established poets and poetry audiences nationally. The Kent State University Press supports the work of the Wick program by publishing the Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize for a first book and the annual chapbook competition for Ohio poets. In addition to these prizes, the Wick program also conducts outreach to students: offering annual scholarships to student poets, reading series, and outreach in area schools. Each year, the program hosts a reading featuring local students in grades 3 -12 and senior adults. All of these poets are participants in workshops led by Kent State undergraduates enrolled in the service-learning course "Teaching Poetry in the Schools." This year’s reading will take place at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, April 22 at the University Auditorium.

Other distinctive poetry programs at university presses range from the well-established, acclaimed series at Chicago, Georgia, Pittsburgh, Yale, and others – to California’s commitment to publishing revolutionary new voices and Wesleyan’s stellar history of putting poetry first.

Since 1919, Yale University Press has sponsored the Yale Series of Younger Poets, publishing a book length work by a poet under the age of 40. It is the oldest annual literary award in the United States. In 2004, Louise Glück will serve as the first female judge in the history of the Series. Muriel Rukeyser, W.S. Merwin, Adrienne Rich, John Ashbery, John Hollander, James Tate, and Robert Hass have all won the Younger Poets prize.

Each year the University of Georgia Press selects four books of poetry for publication in its Contemporary Poetry Series. Because the Press is interested both in encouraging emerging talent and in helping to maintain poets in mid-career, two separate rounds of manuscript selection are held. This spring Timothy Liu (Of Thee I Sing) and Sally Keith (Dwelling Song) were the most recently published poets.

In its poetry program, the University of California Press places strong emphasis on experimental and global poetry from the twentieth-century to the present day. The recently organized Poets for the Millennium series is edited and introduced by a poet or scholar with a fresh and radical approach to the subject. The books effectively extend the work begun in the two volumes of Poems for the Millennium: The University of California Book of Modern and Postmodern Poetry. The first books in the series are selections from the work of André Breton and María Sabina.

The University of Iowa Press, long known for their dedication to short fiction, is also a well-known publisher of poetry. Since 1990 they have published the Iowa Poetry Prize, and have recently launched another series, The Kuhl House Poets. The series editors, poets Jorie Graham and Mark Levine, are charged with choosing work that is formally and verbally inventive.

One of the nation’s premier literary publishers is Louisiana State University Press. In addition to a rich poetry list that includes the Southern Messenger Poets series, LSU has served as the publisher of the Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets for more than a decade. This prestigious award confers the publication of a poet’s first book, a cash prize, and a one-month residency at the Vermont Studio Center. The 2004 winner of the Walt Whitman Award will be announced in May.

In the spirit of National Poetry Month, each April Southern Illinois University Press publishes new entries in the Crab Orchard Award Series in Poetry, copublished by the Crab Orchard Review and edited by Jon Tribble. The three new books this year are: Misery Prefigured by J. Allyn Rosser; This Country of Mothers by Julianna Baggott; and Names above Houses by Oliver de la Paz.

"Poetry…and much more" is the slogan of Wesleyan University Press, and the landscape of contemporary poetry would not look the same without the work of this press. Published since 1959, the Wesleyan Poetry series has garnered numerous prizes: the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle, the Bollingen Prize in Poetry, and many others.

A distinguished series, edited by writer Enid Shomer, is published by the University of Arkansas Press. The press selects only four books of poetry a year, the "only citerion [being] excellence." In 1988, Arkansas published the first book of poems by Billy Collins—later to become one of the country's most widely read poets as the 2002 Poet Laureate.

Many presses also publish prize-winners in recognition of esteemed local poets, further strengthening their own unique programs. Northeastern University Press has published The Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize since 1983 in honor of Morse’s Northeastern University career as poet, teacher, and scholar. The prize recognizes the work of emerging poets, and the 2003 award was given to Chris Forhan for The Actual Moon, The Actual Stars. The University of North Texas Press recently announced the Karen Fiser (Losing and Finding) is the recipient of the Vassar Miller Prize is named after the outstanding American poet, Vassar Miller (1924-1998), who lived her entire life in Houston, Texas. The Walt McDonald First-Book prize is named for the poet and Texas Tech University Press poetry editor who established the competition in 1990. Walt McDonald, a Texas Poet Laureate, retired as the Press's poetry editor in January 1996, and he prize was named for him when current editor Robert Fink took over. And Utah State University Press has announced the May Swenson Poetry Award winner: Frannie Lindsay for Where She Always Was. The prize is named for Swenson who left a legacy of nearly fifty years of writing when she died in 1989. She is buried in Logan, Utah, her hometown—and home of the press.

There are many more examples of fine and varied poetry from America’s university presses— from the University of Pittsburgh Press’s acclaimed Pitt Poetry Series to new award-winning poets from the University of Chicago Press and such works in translation as Georgetown University Press's bilingual publication of Iraqi poet Abdul Wahab Al-Bayati's Love, Death and Exile. In this 2004 National Poetry Month, we invite you to explore this wealth of art and beauty at your local library or bookstore.

The Association of American University Presses (AAUP), an organization of non-profit scholarly publishers, is dedicated to the support of creative and effective scholarly communications. Through professional development opportunities, cooperative programs, and information resources AAUP helps its 125 members fulfill their common commitments to scholarship, the academy and society.

This year, AAUP and the Association of Research Libraries (ARL; www.arl.org) announced the designation of 2004 as the "Year of the University Press." This year-long focus on university presses celebrates the important role presses play in the scholarly communications process and features a host of special programs on campus to raise the visibility of presses. To learn more about AAUP's members and programs, please visit www.aaupnet.org. For more information about the Year of the University Press, go to www.aaupnet.org/arlaaup.