Texas Poet Laureate to Speak at Oct. 15 Event at WT’s Cornette Library

Copy by Chip Chandler, 806-651-2124, [email protected]

CANYON, Texas - Kevin Prufer, the poet laureate of Texas, will be featured at a special Oct. 15 event at West Texas A&M University.

Prufer, professor of English at the University of Houston, will speak at the 6 p.m. Oct. 15 event in the Poets' Garden on the east side of Cornette Library on WT's Canyon campus, weather permitting. The event will move indoors in the case of inclement weather.

Admission is free.

The Texas Poets' Corner at Cornette Library annually hosts Texas poets laureate, said Shawna Kennedy-Witthar, Cornette Library's director of information and library resources.

Amarillo poet and retired oncologist Dr. Phillip Periman also will be honored as the Texas Poets' Corner's first poet laureate.

"We are excited to honor our first poet laureate," Kennedy-Witthar said. "Dr. Periman's work is known throughout the region for its thought-provoking meditations on aging, retirement and other topics of immediate reality."

Periman said he was "overwhelmed with gratitude" for being named the Texas Poets' Corner's first poet laureate.

"Poetry has sustained me all of my life and especially since I retired as a physician 10 years ago," Periman said. "The Texas Poet's Corner is my favorite space in the WT library."

Prufer's latest collection of poetry, "The Fears," was published in 2023 and received the 2024 Rilke Prize. His novel, "Sleepaway," was published in 2024. He plans to publish two books in 2027: "Good People: Poems" and "Summer of Shooting Stars: A Novel."

"Not only is Kevin Prufer a masterful poet whose work blurs the lines between genre, but he is also one of the most generous writers I've ever had the chance to meet," said Dr. Brendan Stephens, WT's Jenny Lind Porter Professor of English. "I look forward to Canyon and WT students having the chance to meet one of Texas's finest poets."

The Poets' Garden features statues of Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost.

The Texas Poets' Corner, which was established in 2003 in WT's Cornette Library, was bequeathed a $2.8 million estate gift in 2021 by the late Dr. Jenny Lind Porter Scott, a former Texas Poet Laureate and WT assistant professor of English.

About West Texas A&M University

West Texas A&M University is a Regional Research University in Canyon, Texas, on a 342-acre residential campus, as well as the Harrington Academic Hall WTAMU Amarillo Center in downtown Amarillo. Established in 1910, the University has been part of The Texas A&M University System since 1990. WT boasts an enrollment of about 9,000 and offers multiple options for students to graduate and succeed: 65 undergraduate degree programs, including eight associate degrees; and 41 graduate degrees, including an integrated bachelor's and master's degree, a specialist degree and three doctoral degrees. WT recently earned a Carnegie Foundation classification as a Research College and University. The Buffaloes are a member of the NCAA Division II Lone Star Conference; WT offers 16 men's and women's athletics programs.

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