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Columns::April 22, 2002
Honors and Awards
Now open for business
Legislature approves merit-based salary raise pool of 3.25 percent
U.S. senators Gramm and Miller will address seniors at Commencement
Finalists chosen for VP for instruction
Penn State University administrator will head physical plant
Russell Library showcases late senator’s baseball card collection
UGA hosts roundtable discussion as part of Africa Initiative
Promotions
Tenure
Members of promotion, tenure reveiw committees are announced
Maximum load: Provost discusses efforts to increase credit-hour production
Campus News
Well versed
Creative writing professor leads a busy life
By Phil Williams
phil@franklin.uga.edu
Light streams through the open blinds of Brian Henry’s first-floor office in Park Hall. His office looks “lived-in” and, as always, Henry himself seems a little harried and genially intense.
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| A poet and an editor, Brian Henry will become director of the university’s creative writing program this summer. (Photo by Peter Frey) |
His normal life operates at a pace most people can’t imagine. He’s a respected poet who has published in many of the world’s top magazines and journals.
His first book, which came out in England in 2000, has just been published by the prestigious Carnegie Mellon University Press in the United States. He has two more books of poetry--Graft and American Incident--coming out next year. He is editor of Verse, an international poetry magazine, and senior editor of Verse Press, whose volumes are getting major national attention.
Henry has written reviews for The New York Times Book Review and contributes regularly to a series of reference books published by Scribner’s. And, of course, he’s an assistant professor of creative writing in the department of English and this summer will become director of the program.
It’s a busy life.
“I like working hard,” Henry says, with a shrug. “I work all the time. I just love what I do and feel lucky to be able to do it.”
For a man whose first poem was published only 10 years ago, Henry has accomplished a significant amount, and his star is rising, both in national and international circles, both as a poet and as an editor.
Henry and noted writer and teacher Judith Ortiz Cofer have kept the creative writing program going this year following the departure of two faculty members. Cofer has been director and they have had the help of adjunct writers. Novelist Reginald McKnight will join the program this summer as Hamilton Holmes Professor, and poet Claudia Rankine will come aboard in the fall of 2003.
Henry grew up in a suburb of Richmond, Va., the only child of parents who had careers in the corporate world. Neither his mother or father were especially interested in the arts (although his mother encouraged his literary aspirations), and Henry, in truth, came to his life’s work somewhat late. In high school, he was excellent in languages and mathematics, and was even on his high school’s Quiz Bowl team on television in Richmond.
“We got slaughtered by the other team,” he says, smiling, “but I got all the math questions right.”
One teacher in high school, his AP English teacher, helped turn Henry toward the world of poetry and fiction, serving as a role model and expanding Henry’s world with works not on the syllabus. Henry chose his undergraduate college--William and Mary--because his AP English teacher had gone there, and followed his bachelor’s degree in English with an M.F.A. at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where he studied with noted authors James Tate and Agha Shahid Ali.
His first poem had been published in the William and Mary undergraduate literary magazine in 1992, and by the time he graduated from UMass., he had published some 40 poems around the country. While at UMass. he also took over as editor of Verse, with his friend Andrew Zawacki as UK editor. After receiving his M.F.A., Henry spent a year in Australia on a Fulbright Scholarship.
On returning, Henry taught at Plymouth State College in Plymouth, N.H., before coming to UGA’s Creative Writing Program in 2000.
Henry’s first book, Astronaut, was published in England by Arc Publications. American poets--like Robert Frost--have often published first in England. Reviews of the book were very good, and it was a finalist for the Forward Prize, one of Britain’s top literary honors.
Henry’s work has appeared in such magazines as The Paris Review, The Kenyon Review, TriQuarterly and the American Poetry Review. He has also published short fiction and numerous essays and has conducted workshops and given readings all over America and as far away as Moscow and Tasmania.
“Writing poems is central to my life, and I feel fortunate that there are people out there who want to publish them,” says Henry.
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