Key West Literary Seminar to celebrate American poets

An extraordinary assembly of American and international poets will gather in Key West Thursday through Sunday, Jan. 7-10, for the 28th annual Key West Literary Seminar. The 2010 seminar will explore 60 years of American poetry and pay tribute to Richard Wilbur, a former United States poet laureate and the only living poet to have won the Pulitzer Prize twice.

In addition, Wilber was a part-time Key West resident from the 1960s until 2005. The seminar’s 2010 theme, “Clearing the Sill of the World,” is taken from a line in his poem “The Writer.”Wilbur will be joined at the seminar by current poet laureate Kay Ryan and previous office-holders Billy Collins, Rita Dove, Mark Strand, Maxine Kumin and Robert Pinsky. Other participants include Pulitzer Prize winners Yusef Komunyakaa, James Tate and Natasha Trethewey, as well as noted poet and Key West resident Kirby Congdon.The seminar schedule consists of readings, lectures, conversations, panel discussions and receptions where writers and readers can share creative interchange in an intimate setting.

As in past years, it is headquartered at Key West’s San Carlos Institute, 516 Duval St. While the majority of the event is available only to registrants, the seminar traditionally opens one of its highlight presentations to the public without charge. At 2 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 10, at the San Carlos, the public is invited to listen to laureates Collins, Dove, Strand, Kumin and Wilbur and Pulitzer Prize winners Komunyakaa and Trethewey. Seating is available on a first-come, first-served basis, so organizers urge audience members to arrive early.

In recent years, the Key West Literary Seminar has grown from a four-day conference into an acclaimed and well-rounded literary organization. The non-profit also hosts a series of writers’ workshops each year and has provided more than $130,000 worth of scholarship support for emerging writers, teachers and librarians to attend the seminar and workshops.

In addition, the organization’s audio archives project presents digital recordings of some of the world’s most influential writers for free use by educators, students and readers worldwide.Although the 2010 seminar is sold out, the organization’s online journal “Littoral,” located at www.kwls.org/lit/kwls_blog/, includes interviews with speakers Wilbur and Collins, and will present coverage of the event as it unfolds.

As well as Richard Wilbur, Key West has been a full- or part-time home to notable poets including Robert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop and James Merrill.For more information about the annual seminars, call (888) 293-9291, or visit www.KeyWestLiterarySeminar.org.