Judy Jordan joins SIUC's creative writing program

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Judy Jordan

CARBONDALE, Ill. -- Poet Judy Jordan, who has received national recognition for her first book, "Carolina Ghost Woods," will join the creative writing faculty at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.

"She's won the Walt Whitman Award (a prize conferred annually by the Academy of American Poets to make possible the publication of a promising poet's first book), and last year, she won the National Book Critics Circle Award for poetry (given annually for the country's best book that year) -- she's got the goods!" said E. Beth Lordan, who oversees SIUC's creative writing program.

Both awards rank among American poetry's top honors, so it's not surprising that "Carolina Ghost Woods" has been garnering critical acclaim.

"The energy in this book is palpable and the language so inventive and so surprising as to remind you what poetry is all about," said a review in "Library Journal."

The slim volume's 59 pages teem with privation, mayhem and early death. James Tate, one of the Whitman Award judges, described its poems as "startling," both because of the "bone-crushing violence and poverty" and because of the "beautiful and precise language the poet brings to bear on these scenes."

"Most poets write from their own life," Jordan told a California reporter last year. "It so happens my life has been difficult."

The daughter of North Carolina sharecroppers, Jordan was herself picking cotton by the time she was 5. Her father was an alcoholic, her mother died when she was 7, and in the mid-1980s, she was homeless for a year.

"One of the things she's concerned with in her work is issues of class in art -- how do they affect the way people approach art or even whether they approach art," Lordan said.

"I think that will make her an elegant fit, not just for our program but for our students."

Jordan will teach poetry writing to both undergraduate and graduate students and will run workshops for the creative writing program. She is due to arrive on campus Aug. 10. Her appointment is subject to ratification by the SIU Board of Trustees.

Jordan earned her bachelor's degree and a master of fine arts degree in poetry from the University of Virginia in 1990 and 1995 respectively; she earned a master of fine arts degree in fiction from the University of Utah in 2000. She comes to SIUC from the San Marcos campus of California State University, where she was an assistant professor of literature and creative writing with a cross appointment in women's studies.

Jordan already has completed a novel, a play and a book-length poem. She is now at work on a memoir and a second volume of poetry.

Photo by Francois Camoin.