Pulitzer Prize-Winning Poet Mark Strand to Open Herbert Conference Oct. 9

Posted 9-12-08

GREENSBORO — English poet and priest George Herbert died 375 years ago. To honor his literary and spiritual legacy, UNCG is celebrating Herbert with a three-day international conference.

Mark Strand, former U.S. Poet Laureate and winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize, will open the conference Thursday, Oct. 9, reading alongside Carl Phillips, chancellor of the American Academy of Poets. The Strand-Phillips poetry reading will be held in Elliott University Center Auditorium at 7:30 p.m., Oct. 9. The reading is free and open to the public.

Dr. Christopher Hodgkins, Class of 1952 Professor in English; Dr. Robert Calhoon, professor emeritus in history; and Dr. William Finley, UNCG’s director of special collections, organized the conference, one of the largest Herbert conferences ever. “George Herbert's Travels: International Print and Cultural Legacies” runs through Saturday, Oct. 11, at UNCG.

Herbert — who died in 1633 and who served as parson of a rural parish near Salisbury, England — was “a spiritual guide to millions since and a poet’s poet whose influence extends across the Atlantic and around the globe,” Hodgkins says. Herbert influenced such American icons as Emily Dickinson and Elizabeth Bishop — and Mark Strand.

UNCG’s Jackson Library became a roosting place for rare Herbert editions due to the passion of Dr. Amy Charles, a professor of English at UNCG from 1956 until her death in 1985. Charles wrote the definitive Herbert biography, “A Life of George Herbert,” and gave UNCG her collection, which rivals the Herbert collection housed at Harvard. She even planted medlar trees descended from trees in Herbert’s garden on the UNCG campus, though the trees have not survived.

To explore the connections between this priestly poet’s rural English world and his print and cultural legacies worldwide, UNCG joined with Sarum College in Salisbury to co-sponsor two linked international and interdisciplinary conferences. The first Herbert conference took place in October 2007 at Sarum College, in the shadow of Salisbury Cathedral.

The UNCG conference will offer plenary addresses by Richard Strier of the University of Chicago, Elizabeth Clarke of the University of Warwick, and Judith Maltby of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and will feature more than 50 scholars from North America, Britain, France, Israel, Iran and Japan.

The UNCG University Libraries, the departments of English and History, the Center for Creative Writing in the Arts, the MFA Writing Program, the Class of 1952, the School of Music and the Atlantic World Research Network are sponsoring the conference.

For the remainder of the conference, registration cost is $125 per person and $85 for graduate students. All UNCG faculty, staff and students may attend free of charge.

Participants may attend an evening banquet on Friday, Oct. 10, for an additional $25 per person.

To view a detailed conference schedule or to register online, visit http://www.uncg.edu/eng/george_herbert/.

To register by phone, call (866) 334-2255 from 9 a.m.-4 p.m. EST.