Kwame Dawes is not a native Nebraskan. Born in Ghana, he later moved to Jamaica, where he spent most of his childhood and early adulthood. In 1992 he relocated to the United States and eventually found himself an American living in Lincoln, Nebraska. In Nebraska, a beautiful and evocative collection of poems, Dawes explores a theme constant in his work—the intersection of memory, home, and artistic invention. The poems, set against the backdrop of Nebraska’s discrete cycle of seasons, are meditative even as they search for a sense of place in a new landscape. While he shovels snow or walks in the bitter cold to his car, he is engulfed with memories of Kingston, yet when he travels, he finds himself longing for the open space of the plains and the first snowfall. With a strong sense of place and haunting memories, Dawes grapples with life in Nebraska as a transplant.
News, Media and Stories
Pacific University’s Department of Theatre & Dance presents Virginia Woolf’s satirical romp through the centuries, Orlando, adapted for stage by Sarah Ruhl to run October 17-20 in the Tom Miles Theatre on the Forest Grove Campus.
For four weeks, visitors to the Kathrin Cawein Gallery on Pacific University’s Forest Grove Campus can work alongside artist Emily Miller to create their own pieces made from plastic debris pulled from the ocean as well as from fishing rope and nets.
On Friday, September 20th, students, faculty, staff, alum, and community members gathered at Pacific University to mark the International Day of Peace and the Global Climate Strike. Students, with the support of the Center for a Sustainable Future at Pacific University, Pacific University Center for Peace and Spirituality, and 350PDX-Washington County Team, provided support. Hundreds showed up to take part.
Pacific University is the site for this weekend's Annual Gathering of the Central Pacific Conference of the United Church of Christ. The Center for Peace and Spirituality will host the UCC’s return to campus.
Donald T. Smith, '49, of Hillsboro passed away at home on June 27, 2019.
Pacific University has been selected to receive a small grant to support the Global Scholars Program as part of the U.S. Department of State’s 2019 Capacity Building Program for U.S. Study Abroad. Pacific University is one of 21 colleges and universities from across the United States selected from over 120 applications to create, expand, and/or diversify American student mobility overseas in support of foreign policy goals. The Capacity Building Program for U.S. Study Abroad is a program of the U.S. Department of State with funding provided by the U.S. Government and supported in its implementation by World Learning.
Incarnate: The Collected Dead Man Poems will be released in October 2019 by Copper Canyon Press: The Dead Man, Marvin Bell’s brilliant poetic invention, is an overarching consciousness, alive and dead at once, defeating time. Mystical and anonymous, The Dead Man offers searing insight into the joys, as well as the catastrophes, of fluctuating cultural and political moments.
Pacific University's Exercise Science Department is taking an active role in surveilling the audiences at theatre performances of George Orwell's 1984.
Rylee Trendell '19 found Pacific to be a good fit because of his personal connections with professors, as well as the opportunity to play collegiate basketball.