OXFORD, Miss. – Poet Carolyn Forche reads at the University
of Mississippi Wednesday (Oct. 24) as part of the Grisham
Visiting Writers Series.
The free, public program begins at 7 p.m. at the Ole
Miss-Oxford Depot.
A native of Detroit, Mich., Forche is known by many within
the literary world as being a political poet, calling
herself a “poet of witness.” Her thematic expressions can
be observed in both “The Country Between Us” and “The Angel
of History,” which examine the dehumanizing effects of
political repression within society.
“Carolyn Forche has been an important voice and force in
American poetry since her 1982 book of poems, “The Country
Between Us,” which portrays her time as a human rights
advocate in El Salvador,” said Gary Short, visiting
assistant professor of English. “Her writing teaches us
that the world is bigger than the self, and bigger than
North America. Like the title of the anthology she edited,
her poetry is an antidote against forgetting.”
Forche received a bachelor’s degree in international
relations and creative writing from Michigan State
University and master’s from Bowling Green State
University. A faculty member at Skidmore College in
Saratoga Springs, N.Y., she has taught at several other
institutions, including the University of Arkansas, Vassar
College and Columbia University, and in the Master of Fine
Arts program at George Mason University.
Forche won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award honoring
her literary work “Gathering of the Tribes,” and she
received the Guggenheim Fellowship Award. “The Country
Between Us” won her the Poetry Society of America’s Alice
Fay di Castagnola Award and was the Lamont Poetry selection
for the Academy of American Poets. Her literary work “The
Angel of History” was selected for the Los Angeles Times
Book Award. Her writing has been featured in such
publications as The New York Times, The Nation, Esquire,
The Washington Post and Mother Jones.
For more information or for assistance related to a
disability, contact Gary Short at 662-915-7439 or by e-mail
at gshort@olemiss.edu. To learn more about the Department
of English, visit