Meet the Writer in Residence. JANET M Roberts
Janet is a prize winning poet and writer. Along with having been a contributor twice at the prestigious Breadloaf Writers Conference in Middlebury, Vermont, she was awarded a scholarship by Kenneth Rexroth with the International
University to write poetry in
Japan. She has received fellowships from
the Aspen Writers Conference, and has been awarded writers’ residencies at
VCCA (Virginia Center for the Creative Arts) and at YADDO. The
New Jersey State Council of the Arts gave her a poetry award, presented by
Alan Ginsberg. She won a competition
sponsored by the AAUW(American
Association of University Women) for her poems. NJ Dept of Education published her poems for children. Two chapbooks were published, “ Heart’s
Chord” for her MFA requirement. She also has had travel writing, feature articles on people and
places, published. She scripted and
directed a series of 12 cable tv programs, “Making the Far Away Near: There and Here” funded by the NEH in
Pennsylvania. She was a featured poet in
POETS IN THE SCHOOLS in NY. More
recently, in 2008, she was awarded a grant from the NEH for her research on an
American poet, Elisabeth Ferguson; she created a performance of her poetry for
the annual House Festival, held at her the Ferguson historical property, near
Philadelphia. Janet has taught creative
writing and writing at a variety of universities, most recently the University
of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. She
also taught Creative writing in two peace education programs for the EU, in
Kosovo, and Macedonia in the last decade, along with conducting training for trainers of peace
education with the Soros Foundation in the Republic of Georgia. She has published a variety of academic articles
in professional journals, on poets, including Ann Sexton, Anna Akhmatova, Amy Lowell, and the Sumerian Poet,
Enheduanna. She specializes in the
relations between the arts: music, poetry, dance, sculpture and Literature, and
has given a variety of performances, lectures and training in this genre,
creating the interdisciplinary program for a seminar at University of
Pennsylvania(published in The New Yorker
education journal) and for the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Both institutions have retained her model for
their ongoing programs and curricula. Her
paper for the International Inter arts Conference in Upsalla, Sweden on Emily Dickinson’s poems set to music by
Aaron Copeland and the contemporary UC
Berkeley graduate, John Adams, was a benchmark; another paper on architecture
and poetry in WS Merwin’s poetry was
given at the International Arts conference in Wheeling, Virginia.
Janet has also been awarded a Fulbright Senior Scholar
Award, during which she was an active
advocate for translation of poetry into English. She received a National Endowment of the Humanities
research grant for study of gardens (Nature) and literature held in Florida. She participated in the national committee on
environment and literature, winning a grant for Thoreau studies in New England,
retracing his travels and researching his journals and writings. Thoreau’s Walden Pond is still one of her
favorite pieces of literature.
“I am very happy to be at
Dorland. I wanted a residency in
California so as to stay on the West Coast and to be close to my godchildren
and god grandchildren, as well as my friends and extended family in the San
Francisco bay area. I also wanted to
experience the culture of art, poetry and music from the West Coast perspective. Dorland provided me that opportunity! I await more journals and documents of my
seven years in China. I learned about
Dorland as a published writer in “Poets
and Writers”. PEN American Center in
Los Angles invites me. My residency allows me to write the draft of my memoir and
to create a manuscript of poetry. I just
finished revising a feature article, one travel piece based on inspiration from
literature, for the Beijing Review, a journal published weekly in China. I have
been productive at Dorland writing up to 5000 words on a good day, and
averaging about 3000 words a day. I
feel grateful for this opportunity; it is now or never! “
Janet Roberts in China in 2012.
Janet with
her Dean and Chairman, Nanjing University. 2012.
Janet with Ikebana
installation at art show in Beijing, China
June 2012.
No comments:
Post a Comment