Participation Type
Panel
Session Title
Session 10.11 Literature and Poetry
Presentation #1 Title
"A Place Called Solid": Celebrating Poet Louise McNeill and her "peculiar stance"
Presentation #1 Abstract or Summary
This panel honors the work and lasting influence of poet Louise McNeill (1911-1993), a native of Pocahontas County, West Virginia, and poet laureate of the state. Four writers discuss her work as well as her legacy for contemporary writers and readers. Louise McNeill’s oeuvre could be easily described in terms of the conference theme, “Known Realities and Imagined Possibilities,” as her creative vision stretched from her roots in a West Virginia farm into a more plenary and frightening world replete with natural and atomic threats. Marianne Worthington discusses issues for modern readers in McNeill’s 1939 classic poetry collection Gauley Mountain. Art Stringer discusses McNeill’s creation myth and editing McNeill’s poems for a new edition of her 1972 Paradox Hill: From Appalachia to Lunar Shore. Ron Houchin presents a reading and commentary of McNeill’s poetry. Novelist Glenn Taylor discusses McNeill’s autobiography, The Milkweed Ladies, as well as McNeill’s influence on his own work as a fiction writer.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #1
Marianne Worthington is co-founder and poetry editor of Still: The Journal and professor of communication and journalism at University of the Cumberlands, Williamsburg, Ky.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #2
A.E. Stringer is the author of three poetry collections, Channel Markers, Human Costume, and most recently, Late Breaking. He has also edited and introduced a new edition of Louise McNeill’s Paradox Hill from West Virginia University Press. For twenty-four years, he taught writing and literature at Marshall University.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #3
Ron Houchin is a poet and fiction writer whose work has appeared widely in America and Europe. His seventh poetry collection, The Man Who Saws Us in Half, was released in late 2013 from the LSU Press Southern Messenger Series.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #4
Glenn Taylor is the author of the novels The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart and The Marrowbone Marble Company. He teaches in the English department at West Virginia University.
"A Place Called Solid": Celebrating Poet Louise McNeill and her "peculiar stance"
Corbly Hall 333
This panel honors the work and lasting influence of poet Louise McNeill (1911-1993), a native of Pocahontas County, West Virginia, and poet laureate of the state. Four writers discuss her work as well as her legacy for contemporary writers and readers. Louise McNeill’s oeuvre could be easily described in terms of the conference theme, “Known Realities and Imagined Possibilities,” as her creative vision stretched from her roots in a West Virginia farm into a more plenary and frightening world replete with natural and atomic threats. Marianne Worthington discusses issues for modern readers in McNeill’s 1939 classic poetry collection Gauley Mountain. Art Stringer discusses McNeill’s creation myth and editing McNeill’s poems for a new edition of her 1972 Paradox Hill: From Appalachia to Lunar Shore. Ron Houchin presents a reading and commentary of McNeill’s poetry. Novelist Glenn Taylor discusses McNeill’s autobiography, The Milkweed Ladies, as well as McNeill’s influence on his own work as a fiction writer.
