Poetry of John Ashbery to be Discussed at SUNY New Paltz

NEW PALTZ — Geoff Ward, a professor of English and head of the department at the University of Dundee (Scotland), will deliver a guest lecture at the State University of New York at New Paltz on Thursday, October 1 at 7:30 p.m. His topic is “‘And paintings are one thing we never seem to run out of’: John Ashbery and the Visual Arts.”

Ward will discuss a group of poems by the influential poet John Ashbery that will be published in 1999 as Girls on the Run. His lecture will deal with the significance of Ashbery’s allusions to visual art in Girls on the Run and in Ashbery’s earlier poetry. The materials related to the lecture are currently on display in the lobby of McKenna Theatre.

Geoff Ward is the author of two academic books, Statues of Liberty: The New York School of Poets, published by Macmillan, in 1992, and reprinted in 1998; and Language Poetry and the American Avant-Guard, published by the British Association of American Studies and Keele University Press, in 1993; and nine books and pamphlets of poetry. He is the editor of The Bloomsbury Guide to Romantic Literature (Bloomsbury Press, 1990) and the co-editor of Re: Joyce (Macmillan, 1998). Ward had been a contributing writer for nearly a dozen books, and has published more than three dozen articles.

Ward is a much sought after lecturer throughout Europe, Japan and the United States. He is the recipient of numerous awards and grants for lecture tours, including the British Academy Research Grant from the Museum of Modern Art (NYC) and funded lecture tours in Holland, Germany, Japan, Portugal, Spain and Hungary.

Sponsors of the event are The Writing Board, the School of Fine and Performing Arts and the departments of art history and English.

There is no charge for the program which will be held in the Honors Center, located in College Hall. A reception will follow the lecture.