The University at Buffalo Poetics Program and Just Buffalo Literary Center will celebrate the legacy of Buffalo’s beloved poet Robert Creeley (1926-2005) on the centenary of his birth on May 21st and May 22nd in Buffalo with FOR LOVE: A Centenary Symposium for Robert Creeley(1926-2005), a celebration of the life and work of Buffalo’s revered poet Robert Creeley sponsored by the UB Poetics Program.

The events in the celebration will include:

Symposium Evening 1: Studies in Creeley — Performances, Editions, Artist Books, Films at the Auditorium of the Burchfield Penney Art Center, 1300 Elmwood Avenue, Buffalo, NY 14222.

6 p.m.: Talks on Creeley in the arts by Jason Camlot, Alexandra Gold, & Benjamin Friedlander moderated by Stephen Fredman.

7:30 p.m.: Public Reception in the Burchfield-Penney

8:15 p.m.: Creeley on film, including works by Grayson Goga & Grace Halley, Bruce Jackson & Diane Christian, Robert Haller, & others in collaboration with Black Rock Arts.

Symposium Evening 2: “Creeley as Colleague, Collaborator, Teacher, Mentor, Poet” for a roundtable discussion with Charles Bernstein, Elizabeth Willis, Kyle Schlesinger, Aaron Lowinger, Benjamin Friedlander, Isaac Jarnot, and Joseph Conte at 5:30 p.m. on Friday, May 22nd at UB Anderson Gallery, 1 Martha Jackson Place, Buffalo, NY 14214.

At 7 p.m., a reception will follow.

At 8 p.m. the evening will continue with a series of community readings and reminiscences about Creeley in Buffalo sponsored by the Poetics Program in collaboration with Just Buffalo Literary Center. All the events are free and open to the public.

About the Robert Creeley

Robert White Creeley (1926-2005) is widely recognized as one of the most important and influential American poets of the twentieth century. Most often associated with the Black Mountain School, Creeley’s work formed a bridge between the modernist poets of the early 20th century and the several generations of innovative poets and poetics that followed him.

Creeley joined the faculty at the University at Buffalo at the invitation of Charles Olson in 1967 at a time when SUNY-Buffalo’s English Department had already defined itself as a bastion for poets, writers, and critics rather than traditional academic literary scholars. Creeley furthered the UB English Department’s international reputation in co-founding the Poetics Program in 1991 with Charles Bernstein, Susan Howe, Raymond Federman, and Dennis Tedlock.

Creeley published more than sixty books of poetry, fiction, and criticism in the United States and abroad, including If I Were Writing This (New Directions, 2003); Just in Time: Poems 1984–1994 (New Directions, 2001); Life & Death (New Directions, 1998); Echoes (New Directions, 1994); Selected Poems 1945–1990 (University of California Press, 1991); Memory Gardens (Marion Boyars Publishing, 1986); Mirrors (New Directions, 1983); The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley, 1945–1975 (University of California Press, 1982); Later (New Directions, 1979); The Finger (Black Sparrow Press, 1968); and For Love: Poems 1950–1960 (Scribner, 1962).

Creeley’s honors include the Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award, the Frost Medal, the Shelley Memorial Award, a National Endowment for the Arts grant, a Rockefeller Foundation grant, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation. In 1999, Yale University awarded Creeley its biennial Bollingen Prize in recognition of his lifetime achievement in American Poetry.

Creeley served as New York state poet laureate from 1989 to 1991 and as the Samuel P. Capen Professor of Poetry and Humanities at the State University of New York, Buffalo. He was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 1999.

His contributions to the wider Western New York community are incalculable. Though never officially named Buffalo’s Poet Laureate, Creeley was a defining voice in the Buffalo writing community for nearly forty years. In fact, one could easily say that Just Buffalo Literary Center and the entire robust Buffalo area poetry scene we have today would not exist were it not for Robert Creeley’s poetry and his influence on this community.