Grisham Endowment Brings 
Poet to Teach at Ole Miss

   Whether plumbing “the depths of human illogic” or assaying the ways of a garden slug, the poetry of Claude Wilkinson has stirred interest among literary circles and, now, among University of Mississippi students, as well.

   An acclaimed poet and literary critic, Wilkinson began teaching at Ole Miss this fall as part of the Southern Writer in Residence Program.  He is the first writer primarily of poetry to be awarded the post, which was established in 1993 with funds from best-selling author John Grisham and his wife, Renée.

   A 1981 graduate of Ole Miss and resident of Nesbit, Mississippi, Wilkinson returns to the Oxford campus to teach creative writing and to work with undergraduate and graduate students in writing. He already has begun conducting public readings and participating in conferences and seminars as part of his year‑long residency.

   Also an accomplished visual artist, Wilkinson is adept at creating mental images, using words and language to paint pictures and stimulate the soul, said Dan Williams, professor of English and a member of the Southern Writer in Residence selection committee.

   “As a poet and a painter, Claude Wilkinson brings a remarkably extensive range of talents to share with Ole Miss students,” Williams said. “He is particularly gifted and appropriate for the post not only because he is a Mississippi native and a graduate of Ole Miss, but also because he is a highly creative artist and an outstanding addition to our campus.”

   “I really like his class,” said Max B. Hipp, a graduate student in English who is from Oxford. “He loves poetry and he’s helping me to love it, too.”

   Wilkinson said he feels fortunate to be selected to the post. “I remember my freshman composition instructor telling our class that she was William Faulkner’s niece, which meant nothing to me at the time,” he said. “Now, I'm living only a couple hundred yards from his home, Rowan Oak. And I recently discovered that John Grisham and I were at the same high school during the early ’70s. Such coincidence makes my appointment serendipitous.”

   The Southern Writer in Residence Program brings notable writers to campus to be a resource to students and to teach in the English department. The Renée and John Grisham Fund pays the salary and living expenses for the writer, who is chosen for the position by a four-member committee.

   Since its inception, the program has hosted such award-winning writers as Mary Hood, author of the short story collection How Far She Went and the novel Familiar Heat; and Mark Richard, author of the novel Fishboy ; as well as T. R. Pearson, Tim Gautreaux, Darcey Steinke, and Randall Kenan.

   Wilkinson is working on a new collection of poems and several critical essays. “Usually my poems explore, or attempt to make more obvious, the fusion between a natural and spiritual realm, between loss and memory, between suffering and consequent change,” he said.

   Wilkinson’s collection, Reading the Earth, won the Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Atlanta Review, the Southern Review, and numerous other journals.

 In 1999, he was awarded a Walter E. Dakin Fellowship in Poetry from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. He also has published criticism on the work of Chinua Achebe, Italo Calvino, and John Cheever.