The Responsibility of Place: Psychic Geographies and People

In this talk, Matthew Wimberley engages with the responsibilities of the writer when engaged with the particulars of place. How does one avoid turning life into a representation and how does one create dignity through language? Together we will explore the possibilities and the dangers of writing about place, confronting and celebrating landscapes essential to ourselves, and begin to consider how the often overlooked is extraordinary. 

About the Presenter

Matthew Wimberley grew up in the Blue Ridge Mountains. He is the author of two collections of poetry, “Daniel Boone’s Window” (LSU, 2020) selected by Dave Smith for the Southern Messenger Poetry series, and “All the Great Territories” (SIU, 2020), winner of the 2018 Crab Orchard Poetry Series First Book award,  winner of the Weatherford Award . A recipient of a grant from the North Carolina Arts Council he was the winner of the 2015 William Matthews Prize from the Asheville Poetry Review, and his work was selected by Mary Szybist for the 2016 Best New Poets Anthology. His writing has appeared most recently in the Poem-a-Day series from the Academy of American Poets, Blackbird, and the Threepenny Review. Wimberley received his MFA from NYU where he worked with children at St. Mary’s Hospital as a Starworks Fellow. He is an Assistant Professor of English at Lees-McRae College in Banner Elk, NC.