VCU news

By Tom Gresham

David Wojahn, director of the creative writing program in the Department of English at VCU, has received his share of accolades over the years. He was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in poetry in 2007 and has won numerous other honors for his verse, including three Pushcart Prizes. Still, some recent awards have added a new dimension to his biography. 

In the fall, Wojahn received the Carole Weinstein Poetry Prize, a $10,000 annual award that recognizes poets with strong ties to Central Virginia who have contributed significantly to the art of poetry. And today Wojahn was announced as one of just 12 recipients of the 2009 Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV) and the Dominion Foundation.

Wojahn, who has taught at VCU for six years, said the latest awards tie him to his adopted home.

“It means a lot to me,” said Wojahn, who also received VCU’s University Distinguished Scholarship Award in the fall at Convocation. “It means I’m being accepted as a Virginian — as a Virginia professor and as a Virginia poet. That’s a really nice feeling.”

“With Good Reason” Wojahn's poems are concerned with the intersections of memories and well-known songs. Listen to him discuss his new book of essays on the importance of poetry today on the radio program "With Good Reason."

The Outstanding Faculty Award honors faculty members for excellence in teaching, research, knowledge integration and public service. Each recipient receives an engraved award and a $5,000 check underwritten by the Dominion Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Dominion. They will be honored during a Feb. 19 ceremony at the Jefferson Hotel in Richmond.

"SCHEV is proud to partner with Dominion to honor these extraordinary teachers, researchers and leaders,” said Daniel J. LaVista, SCHEV’s executive director. “The commitment of these 12 individuals to discovering and sharing knowledge should inspire not only the students in their classrooms but all Virginians.”

David Wojahn is the latest VCU professor to receive the Outstanding Faculty Award from SCHEV. Other VCU professors to win the honor include: Faye Belgrave, psychology (2008) Joann N. Bodurtha, human genetics, pediatrics and obstetrics-gynecology (2006) Alpha A. "Berry" Fowler III, pulmonary and critical care medicine (2006) James T. McLeskey Jr., mechanical engineering, (2006) Judyth Twigg, political science, (2005) Donelson Forsyth, psychology, (2003) Puru Jena, physics (2001) David Urban, marketing (2001) Earl Ellis, pharmacology and toxicology (2000) M. Samy El-Shall, chemistry (1999) Hugo Seibel, anatomy (1999) Robert Holsworth, political science (1997) Janet Younger, nursing (1997) Alan Zfass, medicine (1996) Clifford Edwards, religious studies (1995) William Banks, biochemistry (1991) Bernadine Clarke, nursing (1991) Shaun Ruddy, rheumatology (1990) Reuben Farley, mathematics (1989) Bryant Mangum, English (1989) Thomas Hall, philosophy and religion (1988) Arnold Salzberg, pediatric surgery (1988)

Wojahn calls the teaching of creative writing an inexact science that requires teachers to tailor their lessons to the individual needs of each student. It is not about simply imparting information, he said, nor replicating writers.

“It’s about trying to help them in some mysterious way get on in this world as poets,” Wojahn said.

Wojahn’s accomplishments as a poet are great — Poetry magazine said that Wojahn "writes with as much formal and emotional strength as any poet alive” – so his students are fortunate to have such an able guide.

Wojahn said the dynamic of teaching and writing poetry is symbiotic for him – one fortifying the other. As a teacher, he revels in seeing students discover the pleasures of poetry, and he admires the emotional investment that supplies the poems that they produce – poems that are grounded in the search for a rich emotional life.

Wojahn said he sees a particular value for poetry in the technology-filled climate that students now inhabit. He believes that students are looking for ways to be seen as individuals rather than just as consumers and members of demographics.

“Poetry insists on the value of a private life in a society that does not value one,” Wojahn said.

And though he acknowledges that poets will never fill stadiums and that even the best poets’ volumes are read by numbers much smaller than the average fiction writer, he points out that “the readers poets get tend to be very impassioned readers.”

In addition to the Pulitzer finalist honor and the Pushcart Prizes, his other poetry awards include the William Carlos Williams Book Award, the Society of Midland Authors Book Award, the O.B. Hardison, Jr. Poetry Prize and the George Kent Memorial Prize, among others.

Wojahn’s collections of poetry include “Spirit Cabinet,” “The Falling Hour,” “Late Empire,” “Mystery Train,” “Glassworks,” “Icehouse Lights” and “Interrogation Palace.” He is the author of “Strange Good Fortune,” a collection of essays on contemporary verse.