Contact Information: Sarah Grolnic-McClurg, 413-538-2030, [email protected]
CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED POET VIRGINIA HAMILTON ADAIR TO RECEIVE HONORARY DOCTORAL DEGREE FROM MOUNT HOLYOKE COLLEGE
Special Ceremony for the 1933 Mount Holyoke Graduate Will Be Held at Pomona College in Claremont, Calif. on Monday, January 11
South Hadley, MA--Coming full circle, the institution that first recognized the talent of acclaimed poet Virginia Hamilton Adair will again herald her genius, after more than 60 years, this January 11 at a special afternoon ceremony in Claremont, California. Representing Mount Holyoke College three times in the 1930s at the prestigious annual Glascock poetry contest for promising undergraduate poets, Adair will receive an honorary doctoral degree, a Doctor of Humane Letters, from her alma mater at Pomona College's Thompson Reading Room located on its campus in Crookshank at 2 pm.
Adair is a critically acclaimed poet who published her first volume of poetry at the age of 83 in 1996. Her remarkable story has been told in The New Yorker, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, and other prominent outlets such as the Los Angeles and New York Times.
Of the honorary degree, the president of Mount Holyoke College, Joanne V. Creighton, explained, "We have looked forward to bestowing this honor to this talented poet for many years and are delighted to have the chance to do so at Pomona College. It lets Mount Holyoke again acknowledge, as we did when she represented the College at the Glascock competition as a student, the gift of Virginia Hamilton Adair. I am honored to meet Virginia and to bring her warm greetings and proud recognition from her alma mater."
Mount Holyoke's Glascock Competition: Adair not only represented the women's college at the elite poetry contest in 1931, '32 and '33, but won it twice and placed second the other year. The Katherine Irene Glascock Intercollegiate Poetry Contest, held annually at Mount Holyoke in South Hadley, Mass., is at 75 years the school's oldest running event. The Glascock has launched several of this century's most celebrated American poets, including Sylvia Plath, James Merrill and Mary Jo Salter (a 1976 winner who now teaches at the College and has co-organized the contest). Past judges for the contest have included Robert Frost, W. H. Auden, Marianne Moore, and Adair herself. In planning for the Mount Holyoke honorary degree, Adair said that some of her fondest memories of the College stemmed back to her representation of her alma mater at the Glascock. Of her first-place standing in '32 and '33, she commented, "I felt that I was winning it for the College, not just for myself."
Virginia Hamilton Adair: Adair uttered her first poem at age 2 and had The Iliad read to her by her father while still in her crib. In her twenties, she published some of her poetry in national magazines, and then she ceased to seek an audience for her creative work due to a demanding family life and her career as a college teacher. She taught for two years at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, occasionally at The College of William and Mary and Pomona College, and then spent twenty-two years at California State Polytechnic. Throughout her life, Adair has continued to write, creating thousands of poems. Reluctantly, and through the prodding of fellow poet Robert Mezey of Pomona College, she compiled her first volume of poetry in 1996 at the age of 83. This work, Ants on the Melon, was critically acclaimed and propelled Adair to national recognition. Born in 1913 in the Bronx, Adair spent half her life in Claremont, where she now lives in a retirement home. She is at work on a third book o! f collected poems, which Random House anticipates publishing in 2000. Of her first work, critic Eric Ormby called Adair "the best American poet since Wallace Stevens," and poet Galway Kinnell in the 1996 New Yorker portrait of Adair said, "She has arrived in our world like a comet." Time magazine referred to Adair as "something of a miracle." Adair's poems often focus on events and situations that concern a person or place in her life, such as the sudden suicide of her charismatic husband in 1968, and the Mojave Desert, where she and her husband spent many weekends over the course of many years.
Guests at the Ceremony: In addition to Mount Holyoke College President Joanne V. Creighton, who will present the degree during a small and informal gathering, others planning to attend the ceremony include members of Adair's family, Pomona College President Peter Stanley, and Robert Mezey of Pomona College, the poet and professor who discovered Adair's talent through a chance poetry reading that he organized in 1983. Mezey, who spent two years revising, editing and promoting Ants on the Melon, currently works with Adair on her poetry, as she is sightless due to glaucoma. Also at the event will be members of the Mount Holyoke Alumnae Association, the body which initiated the honorary degree, and representatives of the Mount Holyoke club of Los Angeles.
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NOTES TO THE PRESS:
Members of the media are invited to attend the private ceremony. For admittance and directions, call Sarah Grolnic-McClurg at 413-538-2030. Photography is allowed and interviews following the ceremony will be granted. Phone interviews with Virginia Hamilton Adair, Mount Holyoke President Joanne V. Creighton, and Robert Mezey are also possible. Please call Sarah at the above number to arrange. Copies of Creighton's remarks will be posted on the Mount Holyoke Web site on January 11 at http://www.mtholyoke.edu/offices/comm/press/ and will be available at the press table at the event.
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