W.L. Lyons Brown Library 

Thomas Merton Center

Bellarmine University

In the Dark Before Dawn:

Thomas Merton, Poet

A conference on the poetry of Thomas Merton

19th - 20th October 2007

The Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University is hosting a conference focusing on Thomas Merton's poetry on Friday and Saturday, October 19-20, 2007.

The Merton Center is the official archive of Thomas Merton’s manuscripts and is the repository of the most complete collection of Merton materials in the world.

Participants in this conference will have the opportunity to visit the Thomas Merton Center. Special exhibits in the W.L. Lyons Brown Library and the Merton Center will focus on Merton’s poetry. There will also be opportunities to listen to recordings of Merton reading his own poetry.

In the Dark Before Dawn: New Selected Poems.

by Thomas Merton, edited with an introduction by Lynn Szabo.

Published by New Directions

Speakers:

Michael Higgins

Michael Higgins is President of St. Thomas University, in Fredericton, New Brunswick. He is the author and co-author of numerous books and articles, including the award-winning Heretic Blood: The Spiritual Geography of Thomas Merton, The Jesuit Mystique, The Muted Voice: Religion and the Media, My Father's Business: A Biography of His Eminence G Emmett Cardinal Carter, and the national bestseller, Power And Peril: The Catholic Church at the Crossroads. His most recent work is Stalking the Holy: In Pursuit of Saint-Making, published by Anansi and aired on the CBC Radio One IDEAS programme.
 

George Kilcourse.

George A. Kilcourse is Professor of Theology at Bellarmine University and Director of the MA in Spirituality Program in conjunction with Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. He is the author of Ace of Freedoms: Thomas Merton's Christ and Flannery O'Connor's Religious Imagination: A World With Everything Off Balance (2001). From 1993 until 2003 he served as co-editor of The Merton Annual.

Ross Labrie.

Ross Labrie is President of the Thomas Merton Society of Canada. He is the author of two books on Thomas Merton, The Art of Thomas Merton (1979) and Thomas Merton and the Inclusive Imagination (2001) as well as The Catholic Imagination in American Literature and The Writings of Daniel Berrigan. He has also served as an international advisor to the International Thomas Merton Society.

Patrick F. O'Connell.

Patrick F. O'Connell teaches English and Theology at Gannon University, Erie, PA. A founding member and former president of the International Thomas Merton Society, he serves as editor of The Merton Seasonal. He is co-author of The Thomas Merton Encyclopedia (2002), and editor of The Vision of Thomas Merton (2003), and of Cassian and the Fathers (2005) and Pre-Benedictine Monasticism (2006), the first two volumes of Thomas Merton's novitiate conferences.

Frederick Smock.

Frederick Smock is poet-in-residence at Bellarmine University and is the author of a travel memoir, This Meadow of Time: A Provence Journal, Poetry and Compassion: Essays on Art and Craft and three books of verse, Gardencourt, The Good Life and Guest House. He is the editor of The American Voice Anthology of Poetry. Most recently he has published Pax Intrantibus: A Meditation on the Poetry of Thomas Merton.

Lynn Szabo.

Lynn Szabo is Associate Professor of American Literature and Creative Writing at Trinity Western University, Vancouver, BC, Canada. Her scholarly interest in Thomas Merton has focused on his poetry in relation to his mysticism. She edited the new selection of Merton's poetry, In the Dark Before Dawn: New Selected Poems, and is completing a book on his poetics. She teaches a number of courses and regularly leads retreats on Thomas Merton. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the International Thomas Merton Society.

Bonnie Thurston.

Bonnie Thurston is a founding member of the International Thomas Merton Society and served as its third president. After twenty seven years as a university professor she resigned as William F. Orr Professor of New Testament at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary to live in solitude in West Virginia. She is the author of eleven theological books, two volumes of poetry and over one hundred articles, twenty of which are on Thomas Merton. Most recently she has edited the collection Thomas Merton and Buddhism (2007).

Poets who knew Thomas Merton

Jonathan Greene

Jonathan Greene is a poet, author of over twenty books, most recently On the Banks of Monks Pond: The Thomas Merton/Jonathan Greene Correspondence. Since 1965 he has published over sixty titles though his Gnomon Press and is active as a free-lance book designer.

Brother Paul Quenon, OCSO

Brother Paul Quenon, OCSO, is a monk of the Abbey of Gethsemani and received his novitiate training under Thomas Merton. He has published several books of poetry and is an editor of Monkscript: Literature, Arts and Spirituality.

Ron Seitz

Ron Seitz was a young poet when he befriended and was mentored by Merton during the last ten years of Merton's life. He is the author of Song for Nobody: A Memory Vision of Thomas Merton as well as Monks Pond, Old Hermit, Hai!: A Haiku Homage to Thomas Merton, The Gethsemani Poems, The Mechanics of Tears and Death Eat.
 

Conference Timetable:

Friday 19th October