Category: Students

2018 Library Undergraduate Poetry Prize Winners

EUGENE, Ore. — University of Oregon Libraries and Oregon Poetry Association announce the winners of the inaugural Library Undergraduate Poetry Prize: Sarah Hovet and Joshua Plack. This award is given to two undergraduate students every other year who demonstrate high-quality works of poetry in which the library has played a role in their artistic output. The prize consists of a tuition-supported poetry workshop and a limited-edition printing of their winning poems to be distributed to select libraries in Oregon and to the prize winners.

This poetry prize was conceived in collaborative discussions between the two organizations over the past year. The UO Libraries is the official archive for Oregon poetry which has been substantially derived through contributions by the OPA. The director of Special Collections, David de Lorenzo, said “we wanted to add to the collection by supporting young poets whose work is worthy of recognition. The award idea received enthusiastic support and we plan to make it a permanent part of the undergraduate experience at UO. We are very honored to have the support of the OPA to make this award a reality.”

The 2018 Library Undergraduate Poetry Prize recipients will be presented with their awards and read their selected poems at a reception held in conjunction with the 2018 Oregon Poetry Association Conference. The schedule for the reception follows:

2018 Library Undergraduate Poetry Prize
Ceremony and Reception

Friday, September 28, 2018 · 4:00-6:00 p.m.
University of Oregon Knight Library Browsing Room
1501 Kincaid Street, Eugene, Oregon
Open to the public · Refreshments provided

Poetry Readings by
Library Undergraduate Poetry Prize recipients:
Sarah Hovet and Joshua Plack

Oregon Poetry Association invitees:
Andrew Gonzalez and Amy Miller

University of Oregon invitees:
Amanda Cox and Tia North

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Library Undergraduate Poetry Prize

Deadline – May 5, 2018

The UO Libraries/Oregon Poetry Association Poetry Prize rewards two undergraduate students every other year who demonstrate high-quality works of poetry in which the library has played a role in their artistic output.
Awards will consist of a tuition-supported poetry workshop and a limited edition printing (in broadside) of their winning poem by an Oregon fine press printer.

Prizes will be awarded for a single poem on any topic or theme.

Criteria

  • A maximum of 5 poems should be submitted, which were produced during the student’s undergraduate years.
  • Currently enrolled University of Oregon undergraduates (and graduating seniors).
  • Poems must be a final version prior to submission.

Application Instructions (attach in your email all items listed below)

  • A Biographical Statement (200-450 words)
  • One poem per page saved as separate PDF files (total maximum 5 poems)
  • Acknowledgments Page

Deadline & Process

  • Due May 5, 2018 (11:59 pm)
  • Applications are reviewed at the end of the Spring semester by the Awards Committee (a panel of UO librarians, UO faculty and Oregon Poetry Association members) who will select a winning poem.
  • Students receive awards in the form of a tuition-supported poetry workshop.
  • Students also receive five (5) copies of their printed work.
  • Awards will be presented at the Oregon Poetry Association conference, held in Eugene, OR, on Thursday, September 27, 2018, at the Knight Library Browsing Room.

Contact

  • Email questions and submissions to: oregonloons@gmail.com

Copyright and Distribution Information

  • Authors retain the copyright to their work.
  • Winning printed poems are deposited in Oregon libraries, archives, and historical repositories that collect fine press printed materials.

Funded by the University of Oregon Libraries and the Oregon Poetry Association.

New Exhibit | Creative Commonplacing

Detail of commonplace book of children's book author and illustrator Elizabeth Orton Jones.
Detail of Edna St. Vincent Millay quote in commonplace book of children’s book author and illustrator Elizabeth Orton Jones. Elizabeth Orton Jones papers. Coll 200. Box 7. Special Collections and University Archives, University of Oregon Libraries, Eugene, Oregon.

A new exhibit is now on view during the Winter 2018 term in the Paulson Reading Room in Special Collections and University Archives titled Creative Commonplacing: The Facets of Book Love. 

Students of Professor Mai-Lin Cheng’s Fall 2017 course HC421, “Book Love: Or, Reading Commonplaces,” curated this exhibit of commonplace books, diaries, and scrapbooks. The exhibit also highlights other “book love” projects  undertaken by the students during the course, including the results of a bookbinding workshop with Collections Conservator Marilyn Mohr and a handwriting workshop with Manuscripts Librarian Linda Long.

The public is invited to an opening reception in SCUA on 1/18/18, 4-5 p.m.

An introduction to the exhibit from the guidebook written by the student curatorial team follows:

Our class during Fall 2017 was the first of hopefully many future classes on the topic of Book Love, exploring the origins of book writing and what it means to love books and share what we understand of the world. Commonplaces are both a reflection of an author and their greater community, with the practice beginning in the seventeenth century as a type of note-sharing. In this class, we explored what it means to be an author as opposed to a compiler, as the lines are often blurred in commonplace books, as readers created their own personal anthologies, with passages, images, and other artifacts important to them to create a commonplace book.

The commonplace book is an artifact of active reading. In it, the reader becomes writer. The interchangeability of these two modes of relating to texts is, of course, familiar in our contemporary era of cutting-and-pasting, tweeting and retweeting, liking and linking. Exploring the origins of this information-sharing, however, reveals a more exclusive and exclusionary history in authorship and the sharing of information, and through exploring the history of book-making students deepened their awareness of an elitist history of information control. In this class, students experiment with individual methods of expressing “book love” in creating their own print or digital commonplace books, and through reading the same texts each student created their own unique commonplace work.

 

Taking Action: UO Alum Documenting Black History

This is the second of a series of blog posts highlighting the ongoing work of the Documenting UO History Project within the University Archives. A major part of this project is researching and documenting the often untold and hidden histories of the university’s diverse and underrepresented communities. This year our focus will continue to focus on Black history on campus, specifically Black student activism from the 1960s to present. Prior posts can be seen here.

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Herman Brame and Bill Bowerman, ca. 1980s, photo courtesy of Herman Brame.

“I went to the student union to get something to eat and on the tables were all these flyers. So I picked one up to read it and some white supremacist group had put out flyers that had a picture of an ape and a picture of a black person comparing their anatomies. Saying these are one in the same.” – Herman Brame, Black student experience, University of Oregon, 1968

Last year, the UO Black Student Task Force released a list a list of 12 demands to the university administration — the demands included the immediate renaming of campus buildings, efforts to increase the black student population and an increase in black faculty.  The demands were strikingly similar to the list of demands and grievances offered by the University of Oregon Black Student Union in 1968 — many of which have been echoed on campus for decades. A strong African studies program has been another area where the university seems to lag behind counterparts in Portland and other west coast universities. Many black students say there is general feeling of exclusion on campus and in the community. This is a century-old dilemma plaguing minority groups throughout Eugene and Springfield – something that both lists addressed and that has come to the forefront recently on campus.  This post highlights some of those recent activities and our current outreach with UO alumni on this topic. Continue reading

Moorhouse Photography Collection: Judgement in Cataloging

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Working in the Digital Scholarship Center as a student image cataloger, I have been exposed to multiple collections that are being digitized and shared on Oregon Digital. One of the primary collections I have worked with is the Lee Moorhouse photograph collection. Moorhouse was a photographer in the Pacific Northwest around the turn of the 20th century. He had a wide range of photographic subjects, but two prominent ones I have come across are the touring shows that came to Pendleton, OR and various Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest. At the turn of the century some of the vaudeville acts that performed in Pendleton had a heavily racist element in their show. In his photography of Native Americans, Moorhouse would pose his models with a hodgepodge of Native American objects, part of a tradition of white artists’ creating stereotyped representations of Native Americans. As the cataloger of these photographs, it was my responsibility to add accurate and relevant subject headings that would help researchers find them. Often, I could easily identify and record the subject matter of a photograph. However, in these troubling photos, how do I accurately describe what these images are?

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