Quoting John Denver lyrics in a post about a trip to West Virginia is probably a cheesy move, but this trip to West Liberty University…
…to be their Fall semester Visiting Writer and to deliver the Hughes Lecture really has been pretty heavenly. First, when I got here yesterday, I got to visit Dr. Angela Rehbein’s Women & Minority Writers class to discuss writing and publishing…
…and then yesterday night, I got to give a talk called “X Marks the Spot: Why Paper Books are Like Us but Ebooks are Like Nothing”:
Today, with the amazing assistance of Jessie Janeshek and Marc Harshman, Poet Laureate of the State of West Virginia, I did Poems While You Wait in the Student Union cafeteria where we wrote 28 poems in about two hours:
Then this afternoon, I gave a poetry reading from Robinson Alone and The Kind of Beauty That Has Nowhere to Go…
…to this lovely audience…
…and during the Q&A, I only offended one gentleman enough to cause him to huffily get up and leave (because some people do not want to consider that perhaps the literary canon is affected by subjective tastes and historical/cultural standards and biases, I suppose). Last but not least, this evening, I got to pose for a portrait in Brian Fencl’s art class using this set-up and continuing the typewriter/old school technology theme:
I always love doing visiting writer trips, but this has been one of the best ever for the way that Dr. Steve Criniti organized everything such that it could be so interdisciplinary and thoughtful. Major thanks to him and to Dr. Peter Staffel for inviting me and for making this trip so fantastic.