Galesburg is the birthplace of iconic poet Carl Sandburg, but the three time Pulitzer Prize winner also has connections to other nearby zip codes.
The Bishop Hill Heritage Association is hosting Carl Sandburg: Poet of Community and Human Struggle at 2 p.m. Saturday, June 11 in the Bishop Hill Dairy Building.
Western Illinois University Professor Dr. John Hallwas will give a lecture with readings, all with the intent of familiarizing people to Sandburg’s poetry and poetry in general.
Heritage Association Administrator Todd DeDecker tells WGIL many may not be aware that Sandburg’s sister Mary was a teacher at the Bishop Hill Colony School in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
“Carl Sandburg would come visit his sister. He would take the train here to Bishop Hill,” DeDecker says. “And there’s tales of him walking through town to go visit his sister.”
Also due to Sandburg’s Swedish heritage, DeDecker thought the program was especially appropriate for Bishop Hill.
“It’s going to be kind of a lecture/reading of some of Sandburg’s poems that he had written throughout his life with an emphasis on the Chicago ones,” DeDecker says.
Hallwas’s presentation will center on Chicago Poems, a book of poems that caught the literary world’s attention by it’s focus on free verse and the lives of ordinary people.
DeDecker says although many think that poetry is “highbrow,” Carl Sandburg’s poetry is for the “every man.”
