Dear Friends,

On January 9, 2014 William would have been 95 years old. How his friends still miss him. But the clichès hold true: “he belongs to history,” “his life and achievement go on,” “the spirit does not die.” One important way we continue his legacy each new year on the anniversary of his birth, is to announce an award for poetry in his name. In the past, each of these awards has had it’s raison d’être - David Fisher for his felicity over the years with the muse despite great personal challenges, Lyubomir Levchev for the long-standing friendship with his American Doppelgänger. But the common thread remains poetry, that most seminal of art forms. This year’s winner, Natasha Trethewey is also a very special choice. As we say in the following press release, the Meredith Award to Ms. Trethewey recognizes in a personal way - as from one poet laureate to another - Meredith’s belief that poetry’s challenge is to be useful in the culture and that it reflect “the language of the tribe.” So, it with pleasure and pride that we present this award which will have its ramifications throughout the coming year. But for the moment, we see it as a harbinger of many important events to come and the joy that such master practitioners of the art bring to us. We wish you great happiness and health in the new year and thank you for your support.

Richard Harteis

p.s. As noted in an earlier message, Ben Panciera has re-vitalized the Connecticut College website which so beautifully organizes William’s papers and scholarship. Please check it out and bookmark the following link if you wish to take a look: collections.conncoll.edu/meredith

p.p.s. And we are still enjoying the pleasures of the 2013 award for poetry which we will leave on this page for a bit longer for those who were not able to be with us and until we bring you news of a very special event in the making for 2015.

Press Release

The William Meredith Foundation presents the 2014 William Meredith Award for Poetry to US Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey
The William Meredith Foundation invites writers, reporters, and press advocates to celebrate the 2014 William Meredith Award for Poetry presented to Natasha Trethewey US Poet Laureate, in recognition of her talent as a poet and her work to promote poetry as an art form to American audiences. It carries a modest cash award along with the publication of a chap book by Ms. Trethewey, CONGREGATION, scheduled for publication during National Poetry Month in April, 2014.

Uncasville, CT, January 08, 2014 - FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE January 9, 2014
CONTACT: Foundation Director: RICHARD HARTEIS, Tel. (860) 961-5138 marathonfilm@gmail.com WWW.WilliamMeredithFoundation.org

HEADLINE:

The William Meredith Foundation presents the 2014 William Meredith Award for Poetry to US Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey.

BODY:
The William Meredith Foundation invites writers, reporters, and press advocates to celebrate the 2014 William Meredith Award for Poetry presented to Natasha Trethewey in recognition of her talent as a poet and her work to promote poetry as an art form to American audiences. The award has no application process, but comes to the author unsolicited in the spirit of generosity that informed William’s interactions with the world of poetry when he judged competitions and supported new talent. It carries a modest cash award along with the publication of a chap book by Ms. Trethewey, Congregation, scheduled for publication during National Poetry Month, 2014.

When Natasha Trethewey was selected as the US Poet Laureate for a second term in 2014, Librarian of Congress James Billington writes in his citation "Her poems dig beneath the surface of history—personal or communal, from childhood or from a century ago—to explore the human struggles that we all face." She is, as Robert Casper has said, a poet of “reclamation and reckoning."

The Meredith Award to Ms. Trethewey recognizes in a personal way - as from one poet laureate to another - Meredith’s belief that poetry’s challenge is to be useful in the culture and that it reflect “the language of the tribe.? “Morale is what I think about all the time now, what hopeful men and women can say and do,? Meredith writes, and despite the darkness she often reports, it is the felt observation, “the exploration of the “human struggles we all face? that is the good news of Natasha Trethewey’s poetry. Publishers Weekly describes Beyond Katrina, as a “hauntingly beautiful book, looking at “the vast devastation with sober and poetic eyes.? Meredith’s own assessment of Robert Lowell’s poetry seems fitting as the foundation recognizes “one of our most indispensable poets.?

The message you brought back again and again from the dark brink had the glitter of truth. From the beginning, you told it as memoir: even though you didn’t cause it, the memoirs said of the trouble they recounted, it was always your familiar when it came.

Born in Gulfport, Miss., in 1966, Trethewey earned a B.A. in English from the University of Georgia, an M.A. in poetry from Hollins University, and an M.F.A. from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She has had a distinguished teaching career and is presently the Robert W. Woodruff Professor of English and Creative Writing at Emory University.
She is the author of Thrall (2012), Native Guard (Houghton Mifflin), Bellocq’s Ophelia (Graywolf, 2002), and Domestic Work (Graywolf, 2000). She is also the author of Beyond Kartina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast (University of Georgia Press). Her honors include the Pulitzer Prize and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2012, she was appointed the State Poet Laureate of Mississippi. Throughout 2013, she has joined Jeffrey Brown in a series of on-location broadcast reports for the NewsHour exploring issues that matter to Americans through the framework of poetry.

This award is being announced on the 95th anniversary of Mr. Meredith's birth.

The William Meredith Foundation is proud to announce the establishment of the William Meredith Center for the Arts to remember and honor a great American spirit. Friends who have come together as a foundation wish never to forget this extraordinary human being and the impact he has had on so many lives. Poet, pilot, arborist, beloved teacher and friend, his legacy is a treasure we wish to pass on to future generations. The Meredith Center will keep the flame of generosity and artistic camaraderie burning at Riverrun, William's home on the Thames River in Connecticut where he lived and worked for 60 years and which has recently been added to the State Registry of Historic Landmarks.

The center sponsors educational programs during the year to provide cultural enrichment through a diverse selection of artistic programming. It fosters an appreciation for the work of local and regional artists and develops artist exchange programs internationally as well, particularly with the Republic of Bulgaria where Mr. Meredith was made a citizen by presidential decree for his work in the culture. Artists invited for residencies at the Meredith Center share their talents through art exhibitions, readings, publications and academic seminars. The center serves as a retreat where artists can create new works in the same spirit of peace, equality, and serious endeavor that characterized William's life and work at Riverrun.

First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton wrote a letter joining Connecticut College in a celebration of William's 80th birthday in which she says, "The arts have always been a unifying force in our world, bringing people together across vast cultural, social, economic and geographical divisions. Through his work, William Meredith both enhances and strengthens the American spirit. As you honor Mr. Meredith, you celebrate the timeless power of poetry and poets as our American memory, our purveyors of insight and culture, our eyes and ears who silence the white noise around us, and express the very heart of what connects us, plagues us, and makes us fully human."

The William Meredith Center for the Arts offers another window on the world through which we can enhance our spirit, a window through which artists may search their private worlds and speak for us as we make our slow progress as members of the human tribe. A short signature poem by William Meredith inspires us in our efforts to honor his memory as a model of courage, good will, civility and achievement:

A Major Work

Poems are hard to read
Pictures are hard to see
Music is hard to hear
And people are hard to love

But whether from brute need
Or divine energy
At last mind eye and ear
And the great sloth heart will move.

Printable brochure for the William Meredith Foundation (pdf)