The Poetry Center
The Poetry Center offers a variety of programs and activities that help expand its mission of bringing poetry to an ever-widening audience.
The Poetry Center administers the following awards and activities:
- The Spencer Poetry Awards, including the Spencer Justice Poetry Prize,
the Iris N. Spencer Undergraduate Poetry Award, the Myong Cha Son Haiku Award,
Wil Mills, the Rhina P. Espaillat Award, Sonnet Poetry Award, and the Villanelle Poetry Award.
To learn more about each award visit the Contests and Awards page. - Poet-in-residence
- Poetry reading series
- Mini-conferences on topics related to poetic craft.
- Art song concerts in collaboration with WCU's College of Arts and Humanities and Wells School of Music.
The West Chester University Poetry Center offers an active, interesting, and diverse slate of activities. We invite you to join us and discover the joys of poetry.
For information and updates on the 2024-2025 year, please contact Nancy Pearson, Director of Strategic Planning for Creative Writing and Poetry.
WCU Poetry Center 2024: Wil Mills winner, Guy D’Annolfo; judge and resident poet, Ernest Hilbert; Donald Justice judge and keynote speaker, Patricia Smith; and DJ winner, Sunni Wilkinson are all smiles at the Pop-Up Poetry Festival. Photo Credit: Melissa Reitnour
Shirley Lim Fellowship Opportunity
Purpose of the fund:
The Shirley Geok-lin Lim Award is an annual distribution of up to $1,000 for the chosen recipient to attend the WCU Poetry Conference or WCU Poetry Workshop. The distribution may be used for economy travel and accommodations.
The recipient must be a K-12 teacher from the United States who actively teaches the writing of poetry. Applicants must submit a letter from their principal verifying they teach writing and poetry in the classroom. They must submit 3-6 original poems in form and a copy of a lesson plan for teaching poetry. Submissions will be directed to the Dean of the College of Arts and Humanities for review in coordination with the WCU Poetry Center Director. Please submit all documents to poetry@wcupa.edu with a subject line of “Shirley Lim Award.”
Background Info:
Born in Malacca, Malaysia, Shirley Geok-lin Lim was raised by her Chinese father and attended missionary schools. Although her first languages were Malay and the Hokkien dialect of Chinese, she was reading English poetry by the time she was six. At 10, her first poem was published in The Malacca Times; by age 11, she knew she wanted to be a poet. She earned her B.A. from the University of Malaya and her Ph.D, from Brandeis University.
Lim considers herself primarily a poet, although she has also written three books of short stories, numerous critical texts, three novels, and a memoir. Her debut collection, Crossing the Peninsula and Other Poems (Heinemann, 1980) won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize, a first for a woman and an Asian. Her ten poetry collections include three published in 2015, Ars Poetica for the Day, The Irreversible Sun, and Do You Live In? Embracing the Angel focused on the Democracy Movement that she observed first hand while a Visiting Distinguished Professor in Hong Kong in 2014. Her many awards include the UCSB Faculty Research Lecturer Award (the highest honor UCSB offers its faculty), Fulbright Distinguished Lecturer Awards, two American Book Awards, and the Society for the Study of Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States Lifetime Achievement Award.
Lim was a professor of English and chair of the Women’s Studies department at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She retired in 2012 after almost two decades of service to the university. She also taught at MIT and served as Chair Professor of English at University of Hong Kong.