Home

Named for the Cincinnati poet George Elliston, the Elliston Poetry Room houses a 20th-century poetry collection of over 10,000 books, magazines, records, and recordings. Students and faculty interested in modern poetry can also take advantage of reading space and listening facilities, as well as poetry-writing workshops and poetry readings.

2013 Elliston Poet-in-Residence- Claudia Emerson

Claudia Emerson received the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for her book Late Wife: Poems (LSU Press, 2005). Secure the Shadow, her newest collection, was published in 2012. She is also the author of Figure Studies: Poems, Pinion: An Elegy, and Pharaoh, Pharaoh; all volumes are published in Dave Smith's Southern Messenger Poets series. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, Southern Review, Shenandoah, TriQuarterly, New England Review, and other journals. Emerson is the recipient of a Witter Bynner Fellowship from the Library of Congress and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Virginia Commission for the Arts. She was the Poet Laureate of Virginia from 2008-2010. She is professor of English and Arrington Distinguished Chair in Poetry at Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg, Virginia.