English Professor Earns “Honored Artist” Recognition

Fri, 06/14/2019 - 02:15pm | By: David Tisdale

Dr. Angela Ball, professor of English in The University of Southern Mississippi (USM) School of Humanities, was recently named a 2019 "Honored Artist" by the Mississippi State Committee for the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

The Mississippi State Committee/NMWA supports the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington D.C. and works to increase awareness of women artists in Mississippi. The National Museum of Women in the Arts brings recognition to the achievements of women artists of all periods and nationalities by exhibiting, preserving, acquiring, and researching art by women and by teaching the public about their accomplishments.

A member of the USM faculty since 1979, Dr. Ball, also serves as director for USM’s Center for Writers. Her award-winning and frequently anthologized poems and translations have appeared in journals that include such prestigious publications as The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Field, Partisan Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, and The Southern Review.

Dr. Ball’s books of poetry include Kneeling Between Parked Cars (Owl Creek Press, 1990); Possession (Red Hen, 1995); Quartet (Carnegie Mellon, 1995); and The Museum of the Revolution (Carnegie Mellon, 1999). Her 2007 collection, Night Clerk At the Hotel of Both Worlds (University of Pittsburgh Press), received both the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award in Poetry and the Donald Hall Prize from the Association of Writers and Writing Programs.

“To be honored by my state, and welcomed to an elite coterie of women artists is wonderful. This Committee confirms our state’s loyalty to its inborn spirit and extraordinary energies, to bringing background voices forward for the good of all,” Dr. Ball said.

“The poet William Carlos Williams once said ‘It’s hard to get the news from poems, but people die miserably every day for lack of what is found there,’” Dr. Ball said. “What’s found there—and in all the arts--is the human community: the suffering and striving that make us what we are. Art sings individuality while joining us all.”

The recipient of an Individual Writer’s Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, Dr. Ball has also represented the U.S. at the Poetry International Festival in Rotterdam, and has been a writer in residence at the University of Richmond and at Chateau Lavigny near Lausanne, Switzerland.

"Angela Ball is a renowned poet and beloved teacher, so her recognition by the Mississippi State Committee for the National Museum of Women in Arts is a well-deserved honor,” said her English program colleague, Dr. Eric Tribunella, who also serves as executive associate dean for the College of Arts and Sciences. “Dr. Ball's work participates in the extraordinary legacy of the literary arts in Mississippi."

For information about the USM English program, visit https://www.usm.edu/english. For information on the USM School of Humanities, which is housed in the College of Arts and Sciences, visit https://www.usm.edu/arts-sciences.