Correspondence between poets Walter Clark, Jr. (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor) and John Ridland (University of California, Santa Barbara), dating from 1953-2008.

Walter Houston Clark, Jr. (1931-2008) was born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Clark received his bachelor's degree from Swarthmore and a PhD in philosophy and education from Harvard. Clark taught at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor) from 1965 until his retirement 28 years later. Clark published one book of poetry, View from Mount Paugus and Other Poems (Abattoir Editions, 1976), and published many of his poems in literary journals and magazines. Clark's wife, Francelia Clark, arranged a posthumous volume Like a Bird Flying Home: Poetry and Letters to his Daughter from New Hampshire (Bauhan Publishing, 2013). Clark founded the New England Literature Program (NELP) in 1975, which he co-directed until 1991. Walter Clark Jr. obituary. 2008. The University Record Online, http://www.ur.umich.edu/0708/Jun09_08/obits.php. Accessed on 4 September, 2019.John Ridland (1933-2020) was born in London and grew up in California. He earned his PhD from Claremont Graduate School and published numerous books and chapbooks, including Ode on Violence (1969), In the Shadowless Light (1978), Palms: Six Ballads (1993), A Brahms Card Ballad (2007), Happy in an Ordinary Thing (2013), and A. Lincolniad: An Epic Poem Honoring the Memory of President Abraham Lincoln (2014), among many others. With his wife Muriel he wrote And Say What He Is: The Life of a Special Child (1975). Ridland was also a translator and published translations of the Middle English poems Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Pearl as well as books of selected poems of the Hungarian poets Sándor Márai and Miklós Radnóti and many others here and in Hungary. Ridland published a verse translation of the Hungarian folk epic John the Valiant (Corvina Press, 1999). In 2010, Ridland was recognized with the Balassi Sword Award for his translations of Hungarian literature. Ridland received a gold medal from the Arpad Society of Cleveland Ohio. He taught for over forty years at the University of California Santa Barbara and served as a professor emeritus of the college.

0.83 linear feet (2 document boxes)

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