Our final poetry news round-up of the week looks at the second most popular museum in Turkey for 2019 and the library named for a poet and famous alumna.

Turkish Museum Dedicated to Poet Sees 3.4M Visitors in 2019

The Mevlana Rumi Museum, which is located in Konya, Turkey has reported that last year they had a record 3.4M visitors. This is a huge increase of 23% of visitors to the museum which is dedicated to Mevlana Rumi the Muslim poet and mystic.

The visitors, 3,464,000 in total were local and foreign tourists and helped to make the museum the second most visited museum in the country after Hagia Sophia which is located in Istanbul. The largest number of tourists visiting the museum came from China, Taiwan, American, Iran and South Korea. The visitor’s figures are a 10-year record for the museum.

The poet, who is known to some as Rumi, is fondly remembered in Turkey under the name Mevlana, a name which means scholar. When he died in 1273, his followers founded an order in his honour; the Mevlevi Order, they are also known as the Order of the Whirling Dervishes and are known all over the world for their Sufi dance of the same name.

In 1926 the Mevlana Dervish Tomb and Convent opened, in 1954 it became known as the Mevlana Museum.

Newly Named Edna St. Vincent Millay Library Has Signage Erected

New signage has been put in place outside the library of Camden Hills Regional High School to show its new name. The library has been named after Edna St. Vincent Millay the Pulitzer prize-winning poet who was an alumna of the school.

At a meeting which took place in early January the proposal to name the library after the poet received the support of the five town CSD board.

The new signage was put in place on Tuesday, whilst the school is on February break and includes not only the name of the poet but also her signature.

The idea was first considered when one of the English teachers at the school found a yearbook dated 1909 in the storage area of the school. 1909 was the year that Millay graduated from the school which at the time was called Camden High School.

When she examined the yearbook closely she discovered that not only did it contain some interesting biographical information about Millay bit also some original works from the poet as well. It was then that she began to think that perhaps they should honour their most famous graduate.

Millay was a prolific writer of drama and poetry. She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1923, and her writing was such that it pushed against the boundaries and social norms of the time. She is considered to be a very important poet from her era.

A committee of students, alumni and faculty members has now been created, and together they are looking for ways that they can help promote Millay and her legacy in the local area.