Collected Lyrics of Lewis Turco / Wesli Court

Mr. Turco has collaborated with various artists over the years. At S.U.N.Y. Oswego the poet collaborated first in 1966 with the printmaker Thom. Seawell in three poemprints. Their final collaboration was on a book, The Inhabitant, poems, with prints by Thom. Seawell, including the inspiration for the book a fold-out reproduction of a huge woodcut, The House,” by Seawell, both projects funded by summer Faculty Fellowships from the Research Foundation of State University of New York. The book was published by Despa Press in 1970. While the Spider Slept,” a ballet based upon his poem November 22, 1963,” choreographed by Brian Macdonald with music by Maurice Karkoff, was performed in 1968 and subsequently by the Royal Swedish Ballet and the Royal Winnipeg Ballet. With the Dutch composer Walter Hekster Lewis Turco wrote and published a chamber opera, The Fog (Donemus, 1987). Four Turco poems from two short collections, A Family Album (1990), winner of the Silverfish Review Chapbook Award, and Murmurs in the Walls (1992), winner of the Cooper House Chapbook Award, appeared in national juried art and poetry exhibits mounted by the Peconic Gallery of Riverhead, Long Island, New York. The complete series of these poems, The Green Maces of Autumn: Voices in an Old Maine House, was published in 2000 by the Mathom Bookshop. His Bordello: PoemPrints, a portfolio with collaborator printmaker George O’Connell, was published during a debut exhibition from April 11 to May 12, 1996, at The Rathbone Gallery in Albany, New York. Another collaboration, The Jazz Joint," was included in a four-person show, Some Kind of Narrative,” at the Kirkland (New York) Art Center during March 2001. Collaboration: Poems by Lewis Turco, Prints by George O’Connell, A Retrospective 1981-2001” opened at the Tyler Art Gallery at Oswego State University on October 13, 2001 and ran for one month. Lewis Turco took the B. A. from the University of Connecticut in 1959 and the M. A. from the University of Iowa in 1962. In 1992 he received a Distinguished Alumnus Award from the Alumni Association of the University of Connecticut; he was inducted into the Meriden, Connecticut, Hall of Fame in 1993, and in 1999 he received the John Ciardi Award for lifetime achievement in poetry sponsored by the periodical Italian Americana and the National Italian American Foundation. In May 2000 Mr. Turco received an honorary degree, Doctor of Humane Letters, from Ashland University in Ohio. In June 2004 he was honored with a panel and gave a reading at the West Chester University Poetry Conference in Pennsylvania where the book Lewis Turco and His Work: A Celebration, edited by Steven E. Swerdfeger, was published by Star Cloud Press. He is listed in Who’s Who in America and in The Encyclopedia of American Literature among other reference works.Turco, Lewis is the author of 'Collected Lyrics of Lewis Turco / Wesli Court ' with ISBN 9781932842005 and ISBN 1932842004.