Beall Poetry Festival To Celebrate Its 10th Anniversary April 1-3

A three-day celebration of some of America's finest contemporary poets, with readings, a panel discussion and the Virginia Beall Ball Lecture on Contemporary Poetry, will take place Thursday through Saturday, April 1-3, as part of Baylor University's Beall Poetry Festival. Now in its 10th year, the festival is free and open to the public. All events will be held in Armstrong Browning Library on the Baylor campus.
This year's speakers include Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Galway Kinnell, who will read at 7 p.m. Saturday, April 3.
Kinnell received his bachelor's degree at Princeton University and his master's degree from the University of Rochester. Currently, he is the Erich Maria Remarque Professor in Creative Writing at New York University.
Well known as a reader of his own poetry, he is the author of numerous individual books of poetry, including Imperfect Thirst (1994); Mortal Acts, Mortal Words (1980); The Book of Nightmares (1971); Body Rags (1968); and What a Kingdom It Was (1960), as well as A New Selected Poems (2000) and Selected Poems (1982). He also has published one novel, Black Light (1966), and translated the poetry of Yves Bonnefoy, Francois Villon, Federico Garcia Lorca and most recently, Rainer Maria Rilke, among others.
Kinnell has won a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award, been awarded a MacArthur Fellowship and has served as a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.
The festival also will feature a reading by distinguished poet Linda Pastan, a native of New York City, who will read at 7 p.m. Friday, April 2.
Pastan first published a volume of poetry in 1971 with A Perfect Circle of Sun. Her other books include The Last Uncle (2002), Carnival Evening: New and Selected Poems 1968-1998 (1998), An Early Afterlife (1994), Heroes in Disguise (1991), PM/AM: New and Selected Poems (1982), Waiting for My Life (1981) and The Five Stages of Grief (1978).
The winner of many awards and honors, Pastan is a past recipient of a Pushcart Prize and the 2003 winner of the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. She has been nominated for National Book Awards and has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. She was poet laureate for Maryland from 1991 to 1995.
Delivering the Virginia Beall Ball Lecture on Contemporary Poetry will be Denis Donoghue, the Henry James Professor in English and American Letters at New York University. The lecture will begin at 3:30 p.m. Saturday.
Donoghue received a bachelor's degree from University College in Dublin and a master's degree and doctorate from Cambridge University. He has held many teaching positions, including appointments at University College in Dublin, and at Cambridge University as a fellow of King's and of Magdalen College, as well as the Alexander Lectureship at the University of Toledo.
He has written and edited more than 30 books on literature and theory, including Speaking of Beauty (2003), Words Alone: The Poet T.S. Eliot (2000), The Practice of Reading (1998) and Warrenpoint, a memoir of his early life in Northern Ireland (1994).
Among his many awards and honors are the Robert Penn Warren/Cleanth Brooks Award for Distinguished Scholarship and the M.L. Rosenthal Award (Golden Apple Award) for achievement in Yeats studies. He was the first director of the Yeats International Summer School in Sligo, Ireland, and a member of the board of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. He has received the American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship and is a fellow of the British Academy and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Recently, Donoghue received an honorary doctorate from Queen's University in Belfast for distinction in literature and literary criticism.
Kinnell, Pastan and Donoghue also will take part in a panel discussion at 2 p.m. Saturday. The festival will begin at 7 p.m. Thursday with the presentation of student literary awards.
The Beall Poetry Festival is supported by the John A. and DeLouise McClelland Beall Endowed Fund, established in 1994 by the late Virginia B. Ball of Muncie, Ind., to honor her parents and to encourage the writing and appreciation of poetry.
For a complete schedule of events, visit https://www.baylor.edu/beall . For more information call (254) 710-1768.