ECU Poetry forum celebrates 40th anniversary with reading
Poet and writer John Balaban will offer a poetry reading Feb. 2 to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the ECU Poetry Forum.
The reading take place at 7:30 p.m. in 1032 Bate on the East Carolina University campus and will be followed by a reception in the English department faculty lounge on the second floor.
An afternoon workshop will be held in Mendenhall Great Room 1 at 3 p.m. Books will be available for purchase after the reading. John Balaban, poetry chair at N.C. State University, is the author of eleven books of poetry and prose, including four volumes which together have won The Academy of American Poets’ Lamont prize, a National Poetry Series Selection, and two nominations for the National Book Award.
His Locusts at the Edge of Summer: New and Selected Poems won the 1998 William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America. He is the 2001-2004 National Artist for the Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society. In 2003, he was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship.
In addition to writing poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, he is a translator of Vietnamese poetry, and a past president of the American Literary Translators Association. His books on Vietnam include Ca Dao Vietnam:Vietnamese Folk Poetry, Vietnam: The Land We Never Knew (with the photographer, Geoffrey Clifford), Remembering Heaven’s Face, a memoir, and Vietnam: A Traveler’s Literary Companion (co-edited with Nguyen Qui Duc), as well as his acclaimed Spring Essence: The Poetry of Ho Xuan Huong.
Balaban is poet-in-residence and professor of English at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. The ECU Poetry Forum was founded in 1965 and offers a workshop environment for writers to read their work and receive encouragement and criticism.
Peter Makuck, English Department faculty member and editor of Tar River Poetry, currently directs the forum, which is open to the public. The ECU Poetry Forum has received financial support from both the English Department and the Student Government Association to sponsor the readings of visiting poets of national reputation.
Regular meeting are held in ECU’s Mendenhall 241 at 8 p.m. on the first and third Wednesday of each month.