Five nationally renowned poets visit campus

The event, which is part of the college's Spring Writer's Series, will be held April 14 at noon in the Goins Auditorium. It is sponsored by the college's writer-in-residence, Edward Francisco, and the English Department.

Marilyn Kallet, Jeff Daniel Marion, Linda Parsons Marion, George Scarbrough and Arthur Smith will each read two of their poems and be available for a book signing after the event. Pellissippi State will formally recognize each of the poets for their contributions to poetry.

She was named Outstanding Woman in the Arts by the YWCA in 2000. She is the poetry editor for New Millennium Writings. She has two books coming out in 2005, “Lure” and “Don't Dance With Wolves: Lively Reflections on College Teaching,” which she co-edited with April Morgan, also a UT faculty member.

East Tennessee native Jeff Daniel Marion taught writing and was the poet-in-residence at Carson-Newman College in Jefferson City for more than 25 years. Now living in Knoxville, he is the author of four collections of poems, a children's book and many articles in literary magazines. He also is the recipient of various honors and awards for his poetry, including the Literary Fellowship from the Tennessee Arts Commission in 1978.

Mr. Marion's poetry books include “Watering Places,” “Almanac,” and more recently “Letters Home” and “Ebbing and Flowing Springs: New and Selected Poems and Prose, 1976-2001”. Marion writes primarily about his Southern Appalachian roots.

Linda Parsons Marion is a resident of Knoxville, where she is poetry editor of “Now and Then” magazine. She has received numerous poetry awards, including the Tennessee Writer's Alliance poetry award (1996, 2000 and 2001) and the Tennessee Poetry Prize (1995).

Ms. Marion co-edited with Candance W. Reaves a poetry book, “All Around Us: Poems from the Valley,” in 1996 and wrote “Home Fires” in 1997. Most of her work centers around the home and includes family struggles and dynamics, the culture of women and caretaking, language patterns and dialect, and food and cooking rituals that are steeped in her Tennessee childhood and adult life.

Born in 1915 in Polk County, George Scarbrough was third of seven children in a family of sharecroppers. He attended the University of the South on scholarship for two years and ultimately earned a bachelor's degree from Lincoln Memorial University and a master's degree from UT.

An avid reader from his earliest years, Scarbrough has published poetry in more than 65 magazines and journals over the years. His poetry spans the decades and includes “Tellico Blue” (1948), “The Course is Upward” (1951), “Summer So-Called” (1956), “New and Selected Poems” (1977) and Pulitzer-Prize nominated “Invitation to Kim” (1989). His novel, “A Summer Ago,” was published in 1986. An audio version of his selected poetry, read by Scarbrough, was published in 1997, and a new addition of “Tellico Blue” was published in 1999. Scarbrough's work also appeared in the January 2003 issue of “Poetry.”

Scarbrough lives and writes in Oak Ridge.

Arthur Smith is an English professor at UT. His first book of poems, “Elegy on Independence Day,” was awarded the 1984 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize. The Poetry Society of America selected the book to receive the Norma Farber First Book Award in 1985.

Smith's second book of poems, “Orders of Affection,” was published in 1996, and his third, “The Late World,” was published in 2002.

He has been honored with a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship, two Pushcart Prizes and the Theodore Morrison Fellowship in Poetry for the 1987 Bread Loaf Writer's Conference.

Smith's works have appeared in numerous journals, including “The Nation,” “The New Yorker,” “Poetry, The Southern Review” and “North American Review.”

For more information on the poetry event, contact Edward Francisco at 694-6744 or efrancisco@pstcc.edu.

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