Curated

Curated & Fabricated by The Exhibits and Outreach Team
April 2002-SWC

PAINTING THE AMERICAN WEST

Painting with words is something that eludes most of us, but certainly not Walt McDonald. The Lubbock native and nationally recognized poet has the unmatched ability to describe the wide expanse of hardscrabble grass and broken sod which embodies Llano Estacado. In terms at once clear and strong like the vistas he writes about, McDonald’s realism entwines both the wind and land with barbed wire and windmills and the people who have lived here. McDonald has been painting the American West and other vistas for many years.

McDonald, who founded Texas Tech’s creative writing program in 1971 and served as Director until 2000, has published eighteen collections of poems and a book of fiction during his career.
Since coming to Tech, the Paul Whitfield Horn Professor of English and Poet in Residence has published more than 2100 poems in scores of journals.

The recipient of six awards from the Texas Institute of Letters, McDonald has also won four Western Heritage Awards from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame, was named Texas Poet Laureate for 2001, and has received numerous outstanding teaching and distinguished research awards throughout his career. Last fall, McDonald donated his papers to the Southwest Collection/
Special Collections Library.

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