ECU poet recognized
Peter Makuck, a poet and professor of English at East Carolina University, has won recognition for his efforts to promote the public performance of poetry.
Makuck has received the 1993 Charity Randall Citation from the International Poetry Forum in Pittsburgh, Pa. The award carries a $2,000 honorarium and includes an engraved bronze sculpture. He will receive the award at a public reading of his work in Pittsburgh next spring. The International Poetry Forum, since 1966, has sponsored over 250 evening readings featuring 600 poets from the U.S. and 26 foreign countries. The forum also sponsors a popular and successful poetry-in-the-schools program in the Pittsburgh area.
“The Charity Randall Citation is designed to honor a poet who takes public performance as seriously as the process of writing,” said Makuck, who travels widely to read his works. He also directs a community and campus forum for poetry presentations. He said the organization choses the winners of citations from among the poets appearing at the International Poetry Forum. He explained that this is because members of the Forum’s board prefer to be familiar with a writer’s work and style of reading. Makuck was first invited to read his work at the International Poetry Forum in February of 1990.
Previous winners of the citation include Nobel Laureate Derek Wallcott, Carolyn Forche, Galway Kinnell, Donald Hall, Lucille Clifton, Sandra Gilbert, Thomas Transtomer and Karl Shapiro. Makuck is the author ofBreaking and Entering , a collection of stories published in 1981, and three collections of poems including The Sunkeon Lightship, published in 1990. He also edits Tar River Poetry, featuring poems by area poets, published at ECU. His most recent work is a collection of essays that he co-edited on the acclaimed Welsh poet Leslie Norris. Camden House Publishers will release the book,An Open World: Essays on Leslie Norris, in 1994.
Makuck and Eugne Engand, a professor at Brigham Young University, edited and contributed essays to the volume.