Today is the annual meeting of the Mississippi Philological Association, a scholarly organization focused on language and literature, which also encourages creative panels. I’ll be reading a few poems at one of the sessions, Kim is reading a paper, and MUW has three students who will be reading fiction, poetry, and an essay. It was one of the first regional conferences I attended when I first was hired at the W in 1994, and it’s been a good group to be associated with. The journal of the association, POMPA, publishes creative and scholarly work side by side, and for quite awhile there was a very active group of poets who attended every year. Recently, I’ve been more involved in the Southern Literary Festival, so I haven’t always made the annual conference. But this year, it’s just down the road in Starkville, so I’m glad to be able to participate again. The association has also begun accepting more papers and writing from undergraduate students, so Kim and I really wanted to encourage our students to take part. I’m looking forward to hearing them read, and seeing them take advantage this opportunity for young writers and scholars to branch out from their own universities and see what other students and their faculty are doing.
Mississippi Philological Association
Published by Kendall Dunkelberg
I am a poet, translator, and professor of literature and creative writing at Mississippi University for Women, where I direct the Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing, the undergraduate concentration in creative writing, and the Eudora Welty Writers' Symposium. I am Chair of the Department of Languages, Literature, and Philosophy, and I have published four collections of poetry, Tree Fall with Birdsong, Barrier Island Suite, Time Capsules, and Landscapes and Architectures, as well as a collection of translations of the Belgian poet Paul Snoek, Hercules, Richelieu, and Nostradamus, and the textbook A Writer's Craft: Multi-Genre Creative Writing. I was born and raised in Osage, Iowa, and have lived for over thirty years in Columbus, Mississippi, where my wife Kim and I let wildflowers grow in our yard to the delight of spring polinators and only some of our neighbors. View more posts
Kendall Dunkelberg 