CHaSS to Celebrate May Swenson Day with Walkabout
(photo from Utah State University Special Collections and Archives)
Annual May Swenson Day celebrations take a new direction for Utah State University’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences and its English Department along with Writing Center Director and Logan City’s first poet laureate Star Coulbrooke.
That’s because this year, as part of May Swenson Day, Coulbrooke will lead a Poetry Walkabout beginning at 5 p.m., Thursday, May 28. The Walkabout will include readings of Swenson poetry and a chance for participants to create their own poetic works.
May 28 is celebrated statewide as May Swenson Day. Born in Logan on that date in 1913, Swenson graduated from both Logan High and Utah State University. She is widely recognized as a major figure in 20th century poetry.
Swenson published several poetry collections, including A Cage of Spines, Half Sun Half Sleep and In Other Words. She served as poet-in-residence at several universities in the United States and Canada, including Bryn Mawr, Purdue University and Utah State.
Her many honors included fellowships from the Guggenheim, Ford, Rockefeller and MacArthur foundations and an “Award in Literature” from the National Institute of Arts and Letters. Swenson died in 1989 and is buried in Logan.
The public is invited to attend the walkabout that will begin on the USU campus parking lot between Old Main and the Ray B. West English Department building on Champ Drive near the edge of Old Main Hill.
Walkers will first journey to the campus amphitheater where Swenson poems will be read, then continue on to the Caine House/Swenson Childhood Home at 691 East on 500 North to write poems from a prompt.
Attendees are asked to come prepared with writing supplies and dress for changeable weather conditions. Those choosing not to take the walking tour are invited to meet about 5:30 p.m. at the Caine House/Swenson Childhood Home.
Throughout the year, those interested in learning more about one of Logan City’s most famous native daughters can follow the newly created May Swenson Poetry Path. The path includes more than a half-dozen local sites important in Swenson’s life, many of which display information about her life and examples of her poetry.
A Poetry Path map and more information is available in a new brochure created by USU Undergraduate Research Fellow Marissa Shirley, with the support of a scholarship from the Cache Valley Historical Society.
“I had no idea when I thought of the poetry walkabouts as part of my poet laureate project that my first walkabout event would dovetail so nicely with the Department of English Poetry Path project,” Coulbrooke said.
Brochures are available in the English Department main office (Ray B. West 201), the Merrill-Cazier Library, the Willow Park Zoo gift shop (419 W 700 S), the Cache Valley Visitors Bureau (199 N. Main) and the Logan Library (255 N. Main).
The walkabout is free and open to all.
Utah Public Radio, a program based in USU’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences, produced a report on May Swenson and the May Swenson Poetry Path. Listen to “A Path Through The Poetic Life of May Swenson.”
Related links:
USU College of Humanities and Social Sciences
Contact: Kuniko Poole, (435) 797-2733, kuniko.poole@usu.edu
Writer: Kristin Middaugh, CHaSS communication director, (435) 797-0267, kristin.middaugh@usu.edu
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