Director's Letter page

Letter from the Program Director, James Harms

It isn’t hard to decide what makes the MFA Program at New England College special and distinctive.  It’s just difficult to fit it into a few sentences.

Aside from being the first all-poetry MFA program, we’re also continually reinventing our relationship to poetry itself.  Which is why you’ll have, as an NEC student, the opportunity to work in translation, performance, multimedia, critical writing and more, not to mention as many hours of attention to your writing (in traditional workshops, correspondence, and individual conferences) as any student of poetry could ever expect.  The poem is an ever-changing beast, a shape shifting art form.  And yet all poetry can be traced back to common origins.  The New England College MFA Program in Poetry honors the new while maintaining strong connections to those common origins;  it is a place where tradition meets innovation, a community that emphasizes cooperation and support.  We work with what you bring to the program, and provide in return our years of experience as artists and teachers.  It’s a productive arrangement.

Take a look around this web site, at our new offerings, our new
faculty . . . take a look at our new look.

As you can see, we feature our students prominently.  We’re proud of them, of the extraordinary diversity of experience they bring to our program, and of the many (many) accomplishments they’ve amassed over the years, which are too numerous to list here. Please check out our program blog at

http://www.tygerburning.blogspot.com/

for the latest on our students.  It’s worth pointing out that nearly 100 poets have graduated from our program, and that their poems appear regularly in journals such as Ploughshares, Poetry, The Paris Review, Crazyhorse, The Cimarron Review, The Marlboro Review, The Atlanta Review, Web del Sol, Jacket, , and in books from Alice James, Caven Kerry and other presses.  There are a lot of good reasons to recommend the New England College MFA Program, but the most important is the success of our students.

But if you’re looking for other reasons to apply to our program, try these:  our faculty reflects the full spectrum of American poetry (from the lyric grace of Carol Frost to the speculative poetics of Eleni Sikelianos, and everything in between); we work hard to make it possible for every student we accept to attend NEC, offering scholarships and financial aid; and our student/faculty ratio is never more than 4 to 1.

Think of us now as the NEW New England College MFA Program in Poetry, where faculty don’t simply teach, they help students reach for greatness.  We’re still here, and we’re better than ever.

All my best,

James Harms, Co-Director