University of Arizona Poetry Center

[2]" The Poetry Center's mission is to promote poetic literacy and sustain, enrich and advance a diverse literary culture.

An area of special emphasis within the College of Humanities, the Poetry Center is open and fully accessible to the public.

In the 1940s and 1950s she wrote both poetry and novels (The Flight and My Crown, My Love) and with her husband, the artist John Stephan, published an influential international quarterly of art and literature called The Tiger's Eye.

In 1954 Ruth Stephan began spending winters in Tucson, staying in a cottage near the University of Arizona campus.

She wanted to create a welcoming place and a distinguished collection that could encourage students, faculty and community members "to encounter poetry without intermediaries."

During this historic visit, Congressman Udall asked Frost to consider reading a poem at John F. Kennedy's upcoming Presidential inauguration.

For decades after her initial gift, Ruth Stephan made additional donations of land, stocks, cash and books to the Center.

In 1963 the University of Arizona awarded Ruth Stephan an honorary PhD for "high achievement as a poet, novelist, translator and editor with an international reputation and as a sponsor and patron of imaginative literature."

The library collection, supported by an acquisitions endowment provided by Ms. Stephan and her mother Myrtle Walgreen in the mid-1970s, has grown to include over 70,000 items.

The Ruth Stephan and Myrtle Walgreen Collection includes, on a representative level, the work of most poets writing in English in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Ruth Stephan wrote that poets and writers "work in fiery bursts of creativity and snuff out most of the results with an eraser."

[5] The residence in the new Poetry Center building carries on the tradition of the Poet's Cottage by providing a secluded studio apartment and private garden patio within the complex.

The Poetry Center administers a diverse range of programs and educational activities that create poetic literacy and cultivate a wide literary readership.

Inmates attend weekly workshops, write, edit and submit work to a dedicated journal, Rain Shadow, which is available at the Poetry Center.

High school outreach includes a statewide Bilingual Corrido Contest[6] and Southern Arizona support of the National Poetry Out Loud Competition.

Founded by Dorothy Rubel in 1984 to satisfy the intellectual needs of the growing adult population of Southern Arizona, the Humanities Seminars Program offers non-credit courses led by University faculty throughout the year.