JCCC Department of English Blog

Beth Gulley, professor of English, traveled to Pakistan the week before the spring semester began.  While in there, she gave the keynote speech at The Conference on the Concept of the Community College in Pakistan.  Her speech was titled “Developmental Education, Concept of Learning Centers.”  In addition, Gulley led a four-hour workshop on “Communicating with Students” for faculty at Sukkur IBA University.  The focus of the workshop was Classroom Assessment Techniques (CATs).

Before going to Pakistan, Gulley had the opportunity to read four poems on New Year’s Day at The Writer’s Place.  She was invited to read the poems as a member of the Riverfront Reading Committee.  Finally, she recently had a poem published in the latest edition of The Thorny Locust. The poem is titled “Alan Ginsberg with His Clothes on.”

Matthew Schmeer, professor of English, has recently published the following poems:

• “this morning the chill” appeared in The Gyroscope Revew 18.1 (http://www.gyroscopereview.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/WINTER-2018-FINAL-ISSUE-PDF-FOR-SITE.pdf)
• “Me & Alfred Roanoke, #21” appeared in The St. Louis Review (https://thestlouisreview.com/2018/01/02/me-alfred-roanoke-21-a-poem-by-matthew-w-schmeer/)
• “Dear Carol” appeared in Poetry South 9 (2017)

In addition, two more poems have been accepted for publication:

• “Come What, May” was accepted for publication in The Hartskill Review
• “Saturday, 10 a.m.” was accepted by The Rush (Mount St. Mary’s University)

In February, 2017, The University of Wisconsin Press published Good Night Comrade: The Letters of Denton Welch to Eric Oliver, edited by Dan Murtaugh, adjunct professor of English.   Here is some information that Dan provided about the subject of his book:

Denton Welch (1915–48) died at the age of thirty-three after a brief but brilliant career as a writer and painter. He published four novels published between 1943 and 1950: Maiden Voyage, In Youth Is Pleasure, Brave and Cruel, and A Voice through Cloud, as well as a large body of short fiction and poetry. The revealing, poignant, impressionistic voice that buoys his novels was much praised by critics and literati in England and has since inspired creative artists from William S. Burroughs to John Waters. His achievements were all the more remarkable because he suffered from debilitating spinal and pelvic injuries incurred in a bicycle accident at age eighteen.

Though German bombs were ravaging Britain, Welch wrote in his published work about the idyllic landscapes and local people he observed in Kent. There, in 1943, he met and fell in love with Eric Oliver, a handsome, intelligent, but rather insecure “landboy”—an agricultural worker with the wartime Land Army. Oliver would become a companion, comrade, lover, and caretaker during the last six years of Welch’s life. All fifty-one letters that Welch wrote to Oliver are collected and annotated here for the first time.

To learn more about Dan’s book, follow this link to The University of Wisconsin Press site: https://uwpress.wisc.edu/books/5569.htm.