Edmund Skellings, Florida
Edmund
Skellings received his undergraduate degree from the University of Massachusetts
and his PhD in British and American literature at the University of Iowa,
where he studied and taught at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He founded
the University of Alaska Writers Workshop and established an MFA degree
there. At Florida Atlantic University, he founded and directed the International
Institute for Creative Communication in the 1970s before embarking on
computer-related projects. In 1990 he returned to Florida Atlantic University
to establish the Florida Center for Electronic Communication, where he
now directs and teaches the MFA program in computer arts. His most recent
book, Collected Poems 1958-1998, brings together four previously
published books and a new collection of poems entitled "Personal
Effects."
Appointment: 1980 by governor, lifetime appointment
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
There are no assigned duties or goals for Florida¹s poet laureate. Florida boasts a life appointment of a poet laureate which allows for long-term goals following guidelines of the National Endowment for the Arts.
At my appointment gathering in 1980, I promised the sitting governor, the Honorable Robert Graham, that I would provide leadership in creative writing and literature and would be an active laureate, traveling about the state for appearances and lectures.
By 1990, I had realized a lifelong ambition in building an experimental center for electronic communication whose mission would be to provide a facility and research presence at Florida Atlantic University in Fort Lauderdale to address the growing microcomputer network potential for art and artists.
Fusion of computer imagery and computer audio created a unimedia poem, which became in demand by television stations and won prizes in film and video festivals worldwide, including New York, Los Angeles, Tokyo, and Berlin. The center now offers graduate and undergraduate degrees in the new field of computer poetry.
–Edmund Skellings
© 2003 Poetry & Politics. All Rights Reserved.
