A memorial event for the poet Robert Creeley (1926-2005) will be held on Wed., April 20, from 7:00-9:00 p.m. at Wayne State University\'s Welcome Center at the corner of Woodward and Warren Aves. in Detroit. In an international career that spanned six decades, Creeley was one of the most influential American poets of the last half century, as well as a gifted fiction writer, and essayist. He taught at SUNY Buffalo, Brown University, San Francisco State University, and elsewhere.
This memorial will feature videotapes of the poet reading, and tributes from Lynn Crawford, Carla Harryman, Kathryne Lindberg, Glen Mannisto, Ken Mikolowski,Ted Pearson, George Tysh, and Barrett Watten.
Creeley is known as a central figure of the Black Mountain School of poetry, which became widely known with Donald Allen\'s anthology, The New American Poets, in 1960. The 60s witnessed the publication of the For Love, Words, and Pieces, volumes that established Creeley\'s incisive, minimalist style and anticipated the \"turn to language\" of postmodern poetry in the 1970s. His novel The Island and collection of stories The Gold Diggers appeared in that period as well, followed by volumes of literary criticism and interviews (A Quick Graph and Contexts of Poetry). In 1975, University of California Press published the first of his Collected Poems; titles appearing in the next decades included Mirrors, Memory Gardens, Windows, Echoes, Life and Death, and most recently If I Were Writing This, as well as two further volumes of collected poetry.
The memorial event, hosted by Barrett Watten, poet and professor of English at WSU, will feature brief readings by eight Detroit-area writers with significant ties to Mr. Creeley. Also featured will be videotapes of the poet reading.
Links
http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/authors/creeley/
http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/authors/creeley/obit/los-angles-times.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17388-2005Mar31.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,,1452159,00.html
http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2005/03/31/robert_creeley_78_poet_leader_of_literary_avant_garde/
http://news.independent.co.uk/people/obituaries/story.jsp?story=626775
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4568156
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,60-1549084,00.html
The reading flyer will be available at
http://www.english.wayne.edu/fac_pages/ewatten/pdfs/creeley.pdf
For more information, contact Barrett Watten at b.watten@wayne.edu / 313-577-3067. The public is cordially invited.
Wayne State University is a premier institution offering more than 350 academic programs through 12 schools and colleges to more than 33,000 students.