Adrienne Su, a 27-year-old poet, will be on campus until the end of the term as the first participant in the College's new Poet-in-Residence program.
David Samuel '67 established the program this year as a way to bring young poets to Dartmouth. He endowed the Ralph Samuel '13 Poetry Fellow in his grandfather's name."The purpose of the residency is to bring a young poet to campus for a term to meet with students," English Professor Cynthia Huntington said. "While at Dartmouth, [Su] will also be completing work on her first manuscript."
Su's works have already appeared in numerous literary journals, including Chelsea, Epoch, Kalliope, The Massachusetts Review and Prairie Schooner and in two anthologies: Aloud! Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Cafe and Imagining China.
"Adrienne Su is the perfect person for this kind of program," Huntington said.
Huntington said the English department had been looking into the possibility of creating a Poet-in-Residence program for a long time.
She said the department was particularly interested in bringing a younger poet to the College, since someone closer to the age of students would be more familiar with the challenges they face.
"It was on our wish list for a long time," Huntington said.
Samuel originally approached Huntington and English Professor David Wykes in December, and the three discussed ideas about starting some sort of poetry program.
"We discussed a number of things he could do to encourage poetry at Dartmouth and this idea [of a Poet-in-Residence] really stuck," Huntington said.
Huntington said she is "delighted" with the first-ever Poet-in-Residence program this term, and said she would like to see it continue every spring term.
Su received a master of fine arts degree in poetry from the University of Virginia after graduating Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard in 1989, and in 1993 and 1994, she was a writing fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Mass. Su could not be reached for comment.
In addition to being the Poet-in-Residence, Su opened the College's annual Poetry and Prose Series on April 6 with a reading of her works.
The series resumes on April 27, when poet James McMichael reads from his works at 4 p.m. in the Wren Room of Sanborn Library.
An English professor at the University of California at Irvine, McMichael is the author of four collections of poetry.
Lloyd Schwartz joins the series on Thursday, May 11 at 4 p.m. in the Wren Room. Director of the creative writing program at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, Schwartz is the author of two collections of poetry.
Askold Melnyczuk closes the series on Thursday, May 18.
The Poetry and Prose Series is sponsored by the English department and the Montgomery Endowment which was created and funded by 1925 graduate Kenneth Montgomery and his wife, Harle. It is intended to "make possible major new dimensions for, as well as extraordinary achievements to, the educational experience" at Dartmouth.
