The Warrior Poets Series
The Poetry Society of South Carolina’ Warrior Poets project served armed forces veterans and those who care for them by bringing poetry programs to VA medical centers in Charleston.
Ralph H. Johnson VA Medical Center 2016-2022
Bruce Weigl
April 13-14, 2018
Bruce Weigl, distinguished professor at Lorain County Community College, has published over a dozen poetry collections. He has received awards from the Academy of American Poets, Pushcart, Patterson, Yaddo, Bread Loaf, NEA, and most recently BOA’s Isabella Gardner award for On the Shores of Welcome Home (forthcoming). Song of Napalm was a 1988 Pulitzer nominee. Many of his poems are inspired by his time in the U.S. Army in Vietnam.
Colin D. Halloran with Worthy Evans
February 12-14, 2015
Colin D. Halloran served with the US Army, deploying as an infantryman to Afghanistan in 2006. After being medically evacuated, he returned to civilian life and earned an MFA from Fairfield University, where he now teaches. His new book of poems, Icarian Flux, is forthcoming from Main Street Rag, which in 2012 published his debut collection, Shortly Thereafter, of poems on war and redeployment.
Florida native Worthy Evans studied at College of Charleston, served in the Army, and worked in journalism for ten years. Several of his poems and sports articles have been published, and his collection Green Revolver (USC Press, 2010) won the South Carolina Poetry Book Prize. Aside from making art and parenting two brilliant children, he is a communications specialist for a Medicare contractor in Columbia, SC, and working on his second collection.
Paul Allen
October 10-11, 2014
Poet and songwriter Paul Allen received the SC Arts Commission’s Individual Artist Fellowship, the Mary Roberts Rinehart Award, the Vassar Miller Poetry Prize for American Crawl, the Distinguished Research Award from The College of Charleston, and a Pushcart Prize. Ground Forces (Salmon Poetry, 2008), says poet Andrew Hudgins, is about “brokenness and, with richly explored theological implications, everything in the broken world, the fallen world.” Allen, now a College of Charleston professor emeritus, has taken to the road in a camper.
Readings from the Poetic Canon
September 16 and October 3, 2013
In observance of Suicide Prevention Month in September, and Depression Awareness Month in October, PSSC members gave readings to veterans and staff of the Ralph H. Johnson VAMC, organized by Mary Hutchins Harris, a poet and essayist. Her work appears in Kakalak 2009, Pirene’s Fountain, and Tar River Poetry, and collected in A Tongue Full of Yeses, her 2008 chapbook with Stepping Stones Press.
Brian Turner
April 12, 2013
NEA, Lannan Foundation, and Amy Lowell Traveling fellow Brian Turner holds an MFA from the University of Oregon and lived abroad in South Korea for a year before serving seven years in the U.S. Army. He was deployed to Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1999-2000 with the 10th Mountain Division. Then in November 2003 he was an infantry team leader for a year in Iraq with the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division. His first book, Here, Bullet, chronicles his time in Iraq. Turner has been featured on National Public Radio, PBS Newshour and the BBC. Turner has taught English at Fresno City College.
Frank Gaspar
February 10-11, 2012
Frank X. Gaspar is the author of Late Rapturous (Autumn House Press, 2012), Night of a Thousand Blossoms (Alice James Books, 2004), and A Field Guide to the Heavens (University of Wisconsin Press, 1999), winner of the Brittingham Prize for Poetry. His honors include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry. He teaches in the MFA writing program at Pacific University in Oregon.
Thanks to our sponsors
Poetry at the VA is funded in part by grants from South Arts in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts and the South Carolina Arts Commission.
PSSC receives generous support from the Dubose and Dorothy Heyward Memorial Fund, the John and Susan Bennett Foundation through the Coastal Community Foundation, and PSSC members.
