WILSON, N.C. —August 27, 2020 — Barton College will welcome poet and musician Jim Clark as the featured speaker for this year’s Joyce T. Boone Southern Authors Series Lecture. The program will be held on Tuesday, Sept. 22, at 7 p.m. in Howard Chapel on campus.
This event is open to the public at no charge, and the community is invited to attend. There is a limit of 50 seats for this event. Please note that all guests attending the event must wear face masks and observe social distancing protocols.
About the Speaker —
Clark grew up on a farm on Tennessee’s Cumberland Plateau surrounded by music – from the unadorned a cappella Church of Christ harmonies to the old-time country of his father’s guitar and mandolin playing. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English at Vanderbilt University, a Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and a Ph.D. in modern literature and creative writing at the University of Denver.
Professor Emeritus of English, he taught in the Barton College English Department for 25 years and retired as Dean of Barton’s School of Humanities in 2019. Joining his love of language and music, he has recorded two solo CDs: “Buried Land,” featuring original poetry and traditional folk music, much of it related to the TVA Dale Hollow Dam project’s flooding of his parents’ family farms in the 1940s; and “The Service of Song,” showcasing his musical settings of poems by north Georgia “farmer-poet” Byron Herbert Reece. He also has recorded three folk-rock/Americana CDs with his band The Near Myths: “Wilson,” “Words to Burn,” and “. . . and into the flow.”
Clark has published two books of poems, “Dancing on Canaan’s Ruins” and “Handiwork”; written a play, “The Girl with the Faraway Eye,” staged at the Portland Actors Conservatory Theatre in Portland, Oregon; edited “Fable in the Blood: The Selected Poems of Byron Herbert Reece”; and he served as editor of literary journals “The Denver Quarterly,” “The Greensboro Review,” “The Vanderbilt Poetry Review,” and “Crucible.” His most recent book is “Notions: A Jim Clark Miscellany.”
About the Joyce T. Boone Southern Authors Series —
Joyce T. Boone graduated from Atlantic Christian College with degrees in business administration (1978) and nursing (1988). An enthusiastic advocate for students and alumni of Barton College, Boone believed in the mission of the small, private, liberal arts college. She served on both the Barton College Board of Trustees and the Barton Alumni Council. Boone was president-elect of the Barton College Alumni Council when she passed away in October 2004.
For more information about this event, contact Dr. Rebecca Godwin, Elizabeth H. Jordan Chair for Southern Literature, at 252-399-6364 or rlgodwin@barton.edu.
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