James A. Clark, Ph.D.

Professor of English
Chair, Department of English, Modern Languages, Religion, and Philosophy
Elizabeth H. Jordan Chair of Southern Literature

B.A., Vanderbilt University
M.F.A., University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Ph.D., University of Denver

Hines Hall
jclark@barton.edu | 800-345-4973 x6450

Dr. Jim Clark comes to Barton College from the University of Georgia where he was an assistant professor of English and director of the creative writing program from August 1987 to May 1994.  Clark currently holds the Elizabeth H. Jordan Chair of Southern Literature and was the 2003 Jefferson-Pilot Faculty Member of the Year.  He was the North Carolina Poetry Society’s Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poet for Eastern North Carolina for 2006 and 2007.  Clark is an active member of the South Atlantic Modern Language Association and served as a Member-at-Large of the SAMLA Executive Committee from 2006 to 2009.  He is a member of the editorial board of the North Carolina Literary Review and an assistant editor of Crucible.

Clark’s publications include two books of poems, Dancing on Canaan’s Ruins and Handiwork, and Notions: A Jim Clark Miscellany.  He edited Fable in the Blood: The Selected Poems of Byron Herbert Reece.  His poems, stories, and essays have appeared in The Georgia Review, Prairie Schooner, Southern Poetry Review, Mississippi Quarterly, Denver Quarterly, The Greensboro Review, and many others.

A musician as well as a writer, Clark has released two solo CDs:  Buried Land, a collection of Appalachian folk music and his own poems; and The Service of Song, his musical settings of the poems of Byron Herbert Reece.  With his folk-rock band, The Near Myths, he has released two CDs, Wilson and Words to Burn, with a third CD forthcoming.  He keeps a busy schedule presenting programs of poetry and music throughout North Carolina and the southeast.

Clark previously served at Auburn University from 1986-1987.