Gil Allen authors collection of poems

Gilbert Allen, Furman University’s Bennette E. Geer Professor of Literature, has authored a new collection of poems.

Dr. Allen’s sixth book of poems, Catma, is published by Measure Press Inc.

Greg Williamson describes the volume this way:

“In the wise and witty poems of Catma, Allen casts an alert and literary sidelong eye at the strange and familiar quirks of modern America in which things like Ground Chuck, Monday Night Football, and “The Woman Who Vacuums Her Driveway” are seen with a lens that’s tinted, too, by luminaries like Rilke, Dickinson, Housman, Yeats, Flaubert. With a big heart and an expert pen, he draws our attention to things we might have looked at once but didn’t really see in these beautiful, moving poems. They are truly a delight.”

Allen, who this year was inducted into the South Carolina Academy of Authors, has taught classes in literature and writing at Furman since 1977. Hundreds of his poems, short stories, and essays have appeared in both literary journals and general circulation magazines. He is the editor of the Ninety-Six Press, which has published poetry by distinguished South Carolina writers since 1991. Ninety-Six Press publications have been used as textbooks in colleges, public schools, and libraries throughout the state.

Allen’s poems, stories, and essays have appeared in Able Muse, American Book Review, The American Scholar, Appalachian Journal, College English, Connecticut Review, The Cortland Review, Cumberland Poetry Review, The Georgia Review, Measure, Pembroke Magazine, Sewanee Theological Review, Shenandoah, The Southern Review, and The Southern Poetry Anthology, among other publications. Allen has appeared frequently on South Carolina Public Radio, and he is listed prominently in Walter Edgar’s The South Carolina Encyclopedia.

He has received the Literary Arts Fellowship from the South Carolina Arts Commission, the Robert Penn Warren Prize in Poetry from The Southern Review, and many other awards. In recognition of his work as a writer, editor, and teacher, he was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa (Gamma Chapter, S.C.) in 1998.

Allen holds bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate degrees from Cornell University, where he was a Ford Foundation Fellow. Since 1977 he has lived in Upstate South Carolina with his wife, Barbara, and with their eight unforgettable felines.

For more information about Catma, visit this link, or contact Furman’s News and Media Relations office at (864) 294-3107.