Wiersma Memorial Endowment
Poet Stanley M. Wiersma, a professor of English at Calvin College, died on June 22, 1986, while on sabbatical in the Netherlands. He was 55.
Wiersma’s poetry enjoyed an enormous popular reaction. A bard and teller of folktales, Wiersma focused lengthy narrative poems on a small, ethnic group of characters and revealed through them our universal spiritual nature.
Although a literary scholar and adept at the poet’s craft, Wiersma did not write for specialized readers. When possible, he read his poetry to church and civic groups, and in 1979 Calvin College sponsored a four-week poetry-reading tour in which he shared nationwide his Dutch immigrant’s view of America’s heartland.
Published under the pen name of Sietze Buning, Wiersma’s two volumes, Purpaleanie and Other Permutations and Style and Class, reached a large audience. While many contemporary poets are content to sell 2,000 copies of a book (and 5,000 copies make a poetry volume a best seller), sales of Wiersma’s first volume have reached 8,000 copies.
The Wiersma Memorial Endowment was set up to honor Dr. Wiersma's legacy. The endowment makes it possible for Calvin to bring in leading writers of fiction, poetry, and drama for readings, lectures, or possible performances. Because Dr. Wiersma, a lifelong member of the Reformed Community, became a widely known pioneer in the areas of poetry, fiction, and criticism, the English Department of Calvin College finds it particularly fitting to name this endowment after him.