Poet speaks at Third Thursday literary event
By Susan Pugh on Feb. 18, 2009
When Lesley Wheeler’s mother was young, bombs rained down on her mom’s hometown of Liverpool.
“Liverpool was blitzed,” just as London was during World War II, says Wheeler, a poet and head of the English Department at Washington & Lee University, who will read from her work at 7:30 p.m. during Third Thursdays at Riverviews Artspace.
She grew up hearing her mother, Patricia Cain Wheeler, now 69, tell stories about growing up under siege conditions in already-meager circumstances. Safety was no given; things like plumbing and heating became luxuries.
The stories formed the basis for some poems in Wheeler’s latest collection. Since the blitz wasn’t part of her own experience, she went to Liverpool to interview relatives and others for whom it was.
The poetry collection, “Scholarship Girl,” examines the life of her mother, who came from a working class background and was a scholarship girl who attended private school. It was a mixed experience,
but one that ultimately led, among other things, to having a daughter who graduated from Rutgers and Princeton universities and became an academic.
The monthly Third Thursday literary event is free, with doors opening at 7 p.m. For more information, visit http://www.riverviews.net or call (434) 847-7277.
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