From January 8-15, George Wallace will be staying at the CHS and using the library as a visiting poet. George Wallace is writer in residence at the Walt Whitman Birthplace, first poet laureate of Suffolk County, Long Island NY, and author of 30 chapbooks of poetry. Adjunct professor of English at Pace University in Manhattan, his work has been published in the US, UK, Italy, Greece and India, and been translated into thirteen languages. This is his second visit to the CHS — in December 2015 he appeared and performed his work at Sapphofest, as the special guest of musician and exhibiting artist Donovan.
While at the CHS, George has utilized the library to explore such major cultural themes in classic Hellenic civilization and dramatic literature as Xenia, Hiketeia, Ananke and Horkos. He has said, “I hope to further an intertextual dialogue between my writing and these ideas as found in classic literary sources, and provide a foundation from which to explore the expression of these themes and incorporate them into the fabric of my poetry. In these challenging political times, with many western societies wrestling with the politics of fear, Homer, Euripides, Aeschylus and others have much to tell us, and I think it is incumbent on engaged writers of conscience to understand what the foundational literary works of our civilization have to say about xenophobia and tolerance. To go beyond the conventional political responses, and to apprehend the custom, ritual, and religion which underlie and define how citizens in a moral society ought to treat strangers, refugees and the ‘other.'”