The Poetics Seminar, which I direct here at the University of Kansas, Hall Center for the Humanities, has been going on since 1998, when I founded it. There are many Faculty Seminars, the British Seminar, the Gender Seminar, the Andean Seminar, in which faculty and sometimes graduate students present their research. We also have some money to bring in outside speakers. I have brought in people such as Marjorie Perloff, Jordan Davis, and Ron Silliman. David Shapiro is coming in the Spring.

Today Judy Roitman spoke. In attendance were Stan Lombardo, Jim McCrary, Ken Irby, Lee Chapman, Denise Low, Joe Harrington, and others. I am particularly proud of the way that the Seminar can attract an audience unaffiliated with the University. I doubt many of the other Seminars have as many people not from the University in attendance. It is a kind of bridge between the University and the poetic community at large.

We have had some less than stellar presentations in the seminar, but very few. The great thing about bad presentations is how forgettable they are. I really only remember the good moments. Irby and Silliman on Duncan, Perloff on Silliman and Howe, Davis on Koch, Roitman on Alan Davies or Maryrose Larkin. McCrary on himself. Denise Low. David Perry. I have given talks myself there on occasion.

I gave over the seminar to my colleague Jill Kuhnheim for a little while; then she passed it back to me. It really is my lifeblood. That, and the blog you are now reading. These things connect me with other people who share my passion for poetry.