by Xin Tian Koh

Usually empty on Friday evenings, Colson Hall brimmed with guests, faculty, and students on November 1st, 2013, for the second annual Department of English Gathering, which was part of West Virginia University’s Mountaineer Week. Not too far away from a wine and hors d’oeuvre reception, we hosted a display of MFA work in Colson 223, presenting how we workshop each other’s work and collate our revised works into a thesis. The MA, PWE and PhD programs, the Center for Literary Computing , the WVU Writing Center and the Appalachian Prison Book Project also shared their recent accomplishments and student projects with guests, and secretary Cindy Ulrich’s Powerpoint presentation of department, faculty, and student projects made “everyone look like a rock star,” in Rebecca Doverspike’s words.

The evening culminated in a tribute to poet Tom Andrews. A friend of the WVU English Department and MFA program, Andrews grew up in Charleston, West Virginia. He studied at Hope College, Oberlin College, and the University of Virginia, taught at Ohio University and Purdue University, and was a Poetry Fellow at the American Academy in Rome. Andrews’ publications include poetry collections The Brother’s Country and The Hemophiliac’s Motorcycle, and the memoir Codeine Diary: True Confessions of a Reckless Hemophiliac. Andrews died in London in July 2001, and professor Jim Harms opened the tribute by noting how Andrews left behind “a remarkable body of work” and that “it’s our job to celebrate it.”

MFA graduate Charity Gingerich and MFA students Rebecca Doverspike, Christina Seymour, and Hannah McPherson presented English Department guests, faculty, and students with a round-robin reading of Tom Andrews’ poems “The Hemophiliac’s Motorcycle,” “Evening Song,” and “Hymning the Kanawha” from a collection of Andrews’ work, Random Symmetries. We were joined by writer and translator, David Young—retired professor of English at Oberlin College, editor at Oberlin Press, and co-founder of literary journal FIELD, where Andrews had been an intern. David told us how Andrews, who was more like a colleague than a student to him, loved “being a writer, being among writers,” and how he admired Andrews’ dexterity with endings in his poems.

Creative Writing Program Director Mary Ann Samyn shared a personal reflection on Andrews’ life and ended the evening by reading his poems (which she described as “what poignancy is”): “At Burt Lake” and “North of the Future,” Andrews’ last completed poem. The English Department is thankful to Alice and Ray Andrews for their support of this event, and the WVU Libraries will soon be receiving the Andrews family’s donation of Tom Andrews’ personal papers into its collection. West Virginia University is honored to be part of his literary legacy.