Foundation Scholarships

Kirkwood Poetry Award

One $100 award shall be awarded to a student who has been selected to have written the most outstanding poem submitted in traditional poetic form for that year. All English majors and minors and any UW-Eau Claire student who has submitted work to or been published in NOTA during the academic year for which the award is given may submit a poem in traditional poetic form for consideration for the Kirkwood Award.

Student may submit their own poems or English faculty members may submit students’ poems for consideration by the selection committee.

Determined by the English Department

A committee of English Department faculty shall review the submitted poems and choose the best one submitted. This committee also may select a group of finalist poems to be reviewed by a guest judge who also would be a featured author for the UW-Eau Claire English Festival. The recipient of the Kirkwood Award will be named at the English Festival and invited to read his/her poem at the Festival. The award will be presented at the English Festival.

The award will be announced at the annual English Festival and the award check presented at the Festival. If the recipient is unable to attend the Festival, the award still will be announced at the Festival and the award check mailed to the student by the UW-Eau Claire Foundation.

Richard Kirkwood taught English and poetry at UW-Eau Claire for 34 years. He was widely respected and admired as a poet (and teacher of poetry) who worked with traditional poetic form. He was especially fond of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and other classic works rendered in heroic couplets, but he also asked his students to compose verses in such traditional, challenging forms as villanelles and sestinas. He retired in 1998 and is living in Eau Claire. As a condition of accepting the Richard Kirkwood Poetry Award, the recipients are expected to write an acknowledgement letter and send it in care of the UW-Eau Claire Foundation.