blueprints

The Poem Is a Bridge | 119
I believe it was Dr. Clough himself who sometime later told me he had
enjoyed the reading and had been particularly pleased and surprised that so
many people had come to a poetry event sponsored by Georgia Tech.
Our final reading that spring, held at the Academy of Medicine, was by
David Bottoms, then, still, and should be forever, as far as I’m concerned,
the poet laureate of Georgia; Pearl Cleage, a poet and best-selling novelist;
and Bette Sellers, a former poet laureate of Georgia. It was a terrific reading
at a beautiful venue. (Note: Georgia Tech recently bought this property—it’s
right on the eastern edge of the Tech campus, on West Peachtree,
and we’re going to have all our readings there from now on, after some restoration
work this spring.)
I won’t describe every reading we’ve done (though I’ll list, at the end of
this, whoever has read for Poetry@Tech, as well all the previous McEver
Visiting Chair holders to date). The point of describing the first several is
this: let’s try different things, places, see if we can get our own students and
people from the city to come. To let people know how many first-rate
poets live and work in the Atlanta area, in Georgia in general. To makes
readings accessible—hell, even fun!
Later that spring, our dean at the time, Sue Rosser, asked me if I’d
accept the permanent position of the Bourne Chair. (The McEver Visiting
Chair was designated a one semester a year rotating position.) They were
ready to get that going too. It had never occurred to me to leave Sarah
Lawrence, which I love and from which my daughter recently graduated.
Eventually, we worked out a way I could still teach, in a minor way, in the
Sarah Lawrence MFA program and also accept the position at Georgia
Tech. I went back to Sarah Lawrence (while I was gone, Stephanie Strickland
held the McEver Chair) for a year to fulfill a contractual and ethical
obligation. For the entire 2001 to 2002 academic year, Ginger Murchison
(still not making a dime and without an office or access to a phone, computer,
etc. at Tech) worked to prepare things for the new beginning of
Poetry@Tech in the fall of 2002.
We decided to start with a bang. Endowment funds had been gathering
interest in the bank for a few years, and frankly, then, we were pretty flush.
Our first reading would be Lucille Clifton, Billy Collins, Stephen Dobyns,
and Rita Dove. Andrew Young, a former mayor of Atlanta and former U.S.
ambassador to the United Nations, agreed to do the introductions. On
October 28, 2002, twelve hundred people filled the Ferst Center for the