Franklin Professor Matthews honored

Professor Christopher Matthews' poetry selected for 40th anniversary edition of IWP's 91st Meridian

Recently, Christopher Matthews, Associate Professor, Literature and Creative Writing at Franklin College was invited to contribute work to the historic 40th-anniversary edition of the IWP’s online journal 91st Meridian. Commenting on those poems editor Natasa Durovicova writes, “Closing off this issue is a set of poems by the Irishman Christopher Matthews (IWP 2004), written, with glee and bite, during his stay in the Iowa electoral landscape.” Durovicova continues, “In my years here (Matthews’) poems remain among the few that have left a substantial trace and echo.”

Matthews was Writer in Residence at the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program in 2004. The University of Iowa is the USA’s premier center for creative writing, and its International Writing Program (IWP) has, since its founding in 1967, played host to over a thousand writers from more than 120 countries; among IWP alumni is Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk (1985). The project is designed for both established and emerging international writers—poets, fiction writers, and dramatists—who give and attend talks and readings as they meet well-known and rising American writers and are given broad exposure to currents in American literature.

While at Iowa Matthews was chosen to inaugurate the IWP’s association with the Island Institute, Sitka, Alaska, where he took up a month-long residency. While in the USA he also gave readings around the state of Iowa as well as in St. Louis and New York City. And he participated in and read at the Chicago Humanities Festival.

91st Meridian