New Photography Exhibit Opens at UA Poetry Center

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New Photography Exhibit Opens at UA Poetry Center

LaVerne Harrell Clark poses with Gail Browne, executive director of the UA Poetry Center, during an event in 2006.

LaVerne Harrell Clark took this photo of American poet Stanley Kunitz in 1962. (Credit: The UA Poetry Center)

Photography by LaVerne Harrell Clark, the UA Poetry Center's first director, will be on display through May.

By Annie Guthrie, UA Poetry Center
February 25, 2009

The next University of Arizona Poetry Center library exhibition will feature photographs of poets and writers taken by the late LaVerne Harrell Clark.

The LaVerne Harrell Clark exhibition will be on display March 9 through May 24 in the Jeremy Ingalls Gallery at the Poetry Center, which is located at the Helen S. Schaefer Building, 1508 E. Helen Street.

Clark was the center's first director and served in that capacity from 1962 to 1966. Librarians Rodney Phillips and Wendy Burk will select from over 2,000 recently donated Clark portraits and snapshots for the exhibiton.

The exhibition is being held in honor of Clark, who died Feb. 24, 2008. Among those who Clark photographed were American authors and poets Louise Bogan, Jim Harrison, Robert Bly and Stanley Kunitz. Both Bogan and Kunitz served as poet laureates to the U.S. Library of Congress.

The UA Poetry Center received the gift of the photographs and negatives in July of 2008. All the pieces were from the Clark estate and are now housed in the Poetry Center's rare book room.

The photographs were accompanied by a $25,000 cash gift to establish an endowment for the LaVerne Harrell Clark Award. Beginning in 2010, a cash prize will be awarded every other year for an outstanding piece of prose fiction written by a graduate student in the University's creative writing program.

The endowment will also fund an exhibition of photographs at the Poetry Center every other year.

The upcoming showcase is the first library exhibition of Clark's work. A public reception will be held March 14 from 5:30 to 7 p.m. at the UA Poetry Center.

In addition to being the Poetry Center's first director -- the center was then known as the Ruth Stephan Poetry Center -- Clark was also an avid photographer.

She captured images of most of the visiting poets and writers who passed through Tucson from the 1960s through the 1990s. During those times, many of the visitors read their work at the Poetry Center.

Poet Richard Eberhart once said Clark's photographic talent was in her ability to "focus on the chance moment."

Many of Clark's portraits are taken on visits into the desert landscape or in the midst of conversations at the Poetry Center library and guest cottage. Clark continued to photograph writers after she left Tucson in 1999 and returned to her native Smithville, Texas.