Noel Polk honored with Mississippi Writers Trail marker at Southern Miss

A Mississippi Writers Trail marker honoring literary scholar Noel Polk was unveiled at the University of Southern Mississippi, Visit Mississippi said.

The Picayune native was widely remembered as a leading William Faulkner scholar whose editing, essays, books and teaching advanced understanding of Faulkner and other Mississippi writers, Visit Mississippi said. Polk spent his career at the University of Southern Mississippi and Mississippi State University and edited the scholarly journals “The Southern Quarterly” and “Mississippi Quarterly,” the organization said.

Visit Mississippi said Polk co-founded the William Faulkner and Eudora Welty societies and lectured on Faulkner and Mississippi culture throughout Europe, the former Soviet Union, Japan, Canada and the United States. The Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters, of which he was a founding member, now awards the Noel Polk Lifetime Achievement Award, Visit Mississippi said.

Polk’s published works include “Outside the Southern Myth,” described as an “anti-memoir,” and critical studies such as “Faulkner’s Requiem for a ‘Nun: A Critical Study,” “An Editorial Handbook for William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury,” “Eudora Welty: A Bibliography of Her Work,” “Reading Faulkner: The Sound and the Fury” and “Children of the Dark House: Text and Context in Faulkner,” Visit Mississippi said. His honors included the Richard Wright Literary Excellence Award, the group said. Polk died Aug. 21, 2012, according to Visit Mississippi.

“The Mississippi Writers Trail gives us another meaningful way to tell Hattiesburg’s story through the people and places that have shaped Mississippi’s cultural identity,” Marlo Dorsey, CEO of Visit Hattiesburg, said in a statement. “Noel Polk’s connection to Southern Miss and his influence on Southern literature make this marker an important addition to our destination and to the broader story we share with visitors,” she said. The statewide trail, administered by Visit Mississippi, commemorates the birthplaces, homes, gravesites, museums and literary locales of Mississippi writers, the agency said.

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