Chatham native named poet laureate

By John Crane

Published: August 27, 2008

Chatham native Claudia Emerson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and English professor, knows the routine of giving speeches and signing books.

Her experience will serve her well in her new role as Virginia’s poet laureate. Gov. Timothy M. Kaine appointed Emerson to the two-year position Tuesday.

“I was really honored,” she said Wednesday. “It’s very exciting.”

Poet laureate is an honorary position that promotes greater appreciation for the writing and reading of poetry throughout the state.

Emerson is the author of several books of poetry, including “Pharaoh, Pharaoh,” “Pinion, An Elegy,” “Late Wife,” and her newest collection of poetry, “Figure Studies: Poems.” Her work also has appeared in numerous literary journals.

Emerson is an Arrington Distinguished Chair in Poetry and professor of English at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg.

She won the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry in 2006 for her 2005 book, “Late Wife,” an autobiographical work dealing with the break-up of her 19-year marriage and the beginning of another with her new husband.

With “Figure Studies,” Emerson touches upon childhood and gender themes, how girls are schooled as women.

“It’s inspired by experience I had growing up in a small town,” Emerson, who attended Chatham Hall, said.

Her mother, Mollie Emerson, takes pleasure in Claudia’s accomplishment.

“Of course, I’m very proud of her,” Mollie Emerson, who lives in Chatham, said Wednesday.

“I enjoy reading (Claudia’s poetry) because she writes about things that she knows about,” she added. “It just makes her poetry, for me, easy to read and understand.”

Claudia Emerson declines to elaborate much on her poetry, saying that if she has to explain it, it doesn’t work.

She began dabbling in poetry in high school and in college, but didn’t get serious about it until her late 20s. After graduating from the University of Virginia with a degree in English, Emerson managed the First Edition used bookstore in Danville and worked as a rural mail carrier.

She said slow business at the store and the country mail deliveries gave her ample time to explore poetry and reflect on what she read.

Emerson went on to graduate school and earned a master’s degree in poetry from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

She’s taught at Mary Washington since 1998 and has received a slew of awards, prizes and fellowships for her poetry since the early 1990s, including a national Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in poetry. Emerson received the Virginia Commission for the Arts Individual Artist Fellowship in poetry twice, in 1995 and 2002.

She succeeds Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda as Virginia’s poet laureate. Kreiter-Foronda is a poet, painter, sculptor and lifelong educator.

Contact John R. Crane at or (434) 791-7987.