With hundreds of Walmarts and large malls spreading across the United States, shoppers can enjoy more convenient, sometimes cheaper goods, from groceries to car tires. While smooth highways bridge millions of Americans to glossy new shopping opportunities every year, the nation places less value on the quiet pastoral state that it once treasured. Marty Cain ’13 is exploring this dichotomy of lifestyles for his senior fellowship, The Poetic Art of Rural Decay: Reinterpreting the Pastoral with a Surreal Sense of Place.

Creative writing concentrator Martin Cain’s poetry has already appeared in a number of literary journals, so his award of an Emerson Foundation Summer Research Grant to pursue a study focused on “pastoral” poetry should come as no surprise. Cain ’13 was also the youngest writer to attend Middlebury College’s prestigious Bread Loaf Conference in 2011.

Professor of English Steven Yao has been named an American Council on Education (ACE)  Fellow for 2012-13. The announcement was made by Molly Corbett Broad, president of ACE.

Prize-winning poet Iain Haley Pollock will conduct a workshop and read from his work on Thursday, Oct. 20, at Hamilton.  The workshop "Too Black": The Intersection of Identity, Politics and Creativity in Contemporary Poetry" will take place at 4 p.m. in the Days-Massolo Center. Pollock's reading will begin at 8 p.m. in Dwight Lounge. Both events are free and open to the public.

Poet Don Bogen will visit Hamilton and read selections from his award-winning poetry on Thursday, Sept. 15, at 8 p.m. in the Fillius Events Barn. The reading is free and open to the public.

Several poems by Visiting Assistant Professor of English Jane Springer have recently been published in literary magazines.

Professor of English Onno Oerlemans presented a paper titled “Poetry as Field-Guide: Can you Capture a Ptarmigan in a Poem?” at a conference of the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment (ASLE) on June 24 at the University of Indiana.

Visiting Assistant Professor of English Jane Springer has been selected as the 2011 winner of the Beatrice Hawley Award for her book of poetry, Murder Ballad.  The award is given by Alice James Books, a nonprofit cooperative poetry press founded in 1973. Springer will receive $2,000 and her book will be published with Alice James Books in May 2012.