In its full page layout announcing the recipients of the 1997 Visions 2000 Community Awards the Worcester Telegram & Gazette wrote:
The Cultural Enrichment Award, with a $2,500 honorarium, is given to a person, group, or organization for the year's outstanding creative contribution to the arts or cultural life. The Worcester County Poetry Association produced the Elizabeth Bishop Conference & Poetry festival in Octobor at sites throughout the region. The festival honored noted poet and Worcester native Elizabeth Bishop while promoting through readings attended by more than 2000 people. Many important contemporary poets participated, including Nobel Prize winner Derek Walcott.
At the Awards Ceremony in the Worcester Centrum Centre Grand Ballroom, Editor Harry Whitin remarked as Publisher Bruce Bennett and Editor Robert Nemeth presented the award to the Worcester County Poetry Association:
It isn't often that Worcester plays host to Pulitzer Prize winners and even rarer that a Nobel visits.
But all that happened in 1997 and is in part the reason that we make the 1997 Visions 2000 Cultural Enrichment Award.
This is an award given annually to a person or group responsible for outstanding contribution to the region's cultural life or the arts. This year, the award is made to an organization, the Worcester County Poetry association.
Now, poetry and tourism are not two things that you might consider in the same thought, but last year the Poetry Association staged a festival that brought visitors from Europe, South America, and just a few points closer to home.
The lure was a week-long conference and festival based on the work of noted poet Elizabeth Bishop, who was born in Worcester and died in 1979,
The festival was unique. Under the umbrella of the County Poetry Association, several local colleges and universities participated, workshops were held in area high schools to encourage budding poets, a scholarly conference with 18 separate working sessions was mounted, local galleries and libraries displayed Bishop's art works and writings, a map of literary Worcester was created and permanent plaques were erected to honor some of Worcester's writers. Before all was said and done, a total of 22 institutions and agencies, with a diverse range from the Shrewsbury Public Library to the Massachusetts Cultural Council to the Chamber of Commerce, were involved.
The conference and festival drew international recognition and raised local awareness of our literary heritage.
The festival entertained. It educated. It left an enduring legacy.
For its spectacular work staging the Elizabeth Bishop Conference and Poetry Festival, the Worcester County Poetry Association is this year's recipient of the Visions 2000 Cultural Enrichment Award. Accepting in behalf of the association are Angela Dorenkamp, Carle Johnson, and Laura Menides, the organizers of the festival.