In July 2018 the XVIII International Hemingway Conference was held in Paris, a record-shattering event with about 600 participants from 20-some countries for a full week of academic sessions and special events. While the conference was an international event on the grand scale, it was also very much a New Paltz event, with more than 30 participants currently or formerly from SUNY-New Paltz, including five New Paltz MAs(and former TAs) who have since leaving New Paltz earned their PhDs and are now professors around the country; another five New Paltz MAs(and former TAs) now working on their PhDs at various institutions; and numerous current and former New Paltz MA students (and TAs) as well as some New Paltz undergraduate English students. More than two dozen Paltzonians—aside from presenting some of the best conference papers—performed exemplary conference service as members of the Paris Logistics Committee. A commingled paraphrase of what many conference attendees from around the country and the world remarked would sound like this: Wow! New Paltz must be some special place. The conference co-directors, H. R. Stoneback (Distinguished Professor of English at New Paltz) and Matthew Nickel (New Paltz BA 2002 MA 2007, now Dr. Nickel, Associate Professor of English at Misericordia University) agree with that widespread praise for our New Paltz students.
Along with a dazzling array of featured speakers from Terry Eagleton to Adam Gopnik. Lesley Blume to Valerie Hemingway and many others, the conference featured two special poetry readings, one on (yes, up and on) the Eiffel Tower, the other at the historic American Library in Paris. We are pleased to present here a few of the poems read at these special occasions, including the work of two prominent award-winning poets, Ron Smith (former Poet Laureate of Virginia) and John Beall (Collegiate School, Manhattan), as well as several other poems from the Paris conference and the immediately following International Imagism Conference in the South of France where, again, New Paltz was superbly represented. A few of the poems printed here first appeared in the book (and on the CD) Poems & Songs for Hemingway & Paris (2018).
