Biography
 Paul
Marion
was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1954. He
grew up in Franco-American parishes in Lowell
(St. Louis de France) and nearby Dracut
(Ste. Thérèse). Baseball and The Beatles were
the constants of his youth. His father was a
mill worker who played a good game of golf and
his mother was a top saleswoman in a city
department store—both were avid readers. His two
older brothers, respectively, teach art in
public schools and political science in college.
He earned degrees in political science (B.S.)
and community social psychology (M.A.) from the
University of Massachusetts at Lowell, and also
studied in the M.F.A. Program in Writing at the
University of California at Irvine.
For more than 30 years, he has been
involved with the revitalization of Lowell, which is considered the
“premier rehabilitation model for gritty cities worldwide.” In the
1980’s, he worked as an administrator for the U.S. Department of the
Interior, helping to create Lowell National Historical Park. Among
other projects, he managed a heritage-based cultural affairs program
that included building artist studios in a renovated textile mill
(1982); managing a cultural grants program; commissioning and
installing the Lowell Public Art Collection (1983-89); coordinating
the creation of the Jack Kerouac Commemorative (1988); and
collaborating with partners on developing museum exhibitions,
producing academic conferences, and other community projects. He is
one of the founders of the acclaimed Lowell Folk Festival (1987) and
the Lowell Heritage Partnership (2000), an alliance of 20
environmental, preservation, and cultural groups. In 1996, the New
England Foundation for the Arts awarded him a four-year Culture in
Community Fellowship, and in 2008 he received the Local Heroes award
from Community Teamwork Inc.
He is Executive Director of
Community and Cultural Affairs at the University of Massachusetts
Lowell. On campus, he has led efforts to create the endowment and
residency program for the Greeley Scholar for Peace Studies and to
earn national designation as a “community-engaged university” from
the Carnegie Foundation for Excellence in Teaching. Working with
campus colleagues and community partners in 2007, he helped Lowell
win a major award from the State and Local History Association of
America for a museum exhibition and allied programs when Lowell
hosted a display of Jack Kerouac’s legendary On the Road
scroll manuscript while it was on national tour. In 2009, he was
named co-director of the UMass Lowell Center for Arts & Ideas.
He and his wife, Rosemary Noon, and
son, Joseph, live in an 1860’s mill agent’s house in Lowell.
He is the author of several
collections of poetry, including Strong Place (1984)
and What Is the City (2006), and editor of Atop an
Underwood: Early Stories and Other Writings by Jack Kerouac
(Viking/Penguin, 1999), which has been published in translation in
Italy (Mondadori) and France (DeNoel). His poems and essays have
appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Bohemian (Japan),
Bostonia, The Café Review, Carolina Quarterly, The Christian Science
Monitor, The Massachusetts Review, Public Art Review, Salamander,
The Salmon Literary Quarterly (Ireland), Wisconsin Review,
Yankee, and several anthologies, including For A Living:
The Poetry of Work (University of Illinois Press), French
Connections: A Gathering of Franco-American Poets (Louisiana
Literature Press), Line Drives: 100 Contemporary Baseball Poems
(Southern Illinois University Press), Québec Kérouac Blues (Écrits
des Forges), and Visiting Frost: Poems Inspired by the Life
and Work of Robert Frost (University of Iowa Press).
With Kathleen Aponick and
Jane Brox, he co-edited Merrimack: A Poetry Anthology (1992),
a collection of poems by 52 writers from the Merrimack Valley of New
England. He is also the editor and co-author of French Class:
French Canadian-American Writings on Identity, Culture, and Place
(1999). With Charles Nikitopoulos, he created and edited the
online bioregional journal, The Bridge Review: Merrimack Valley
Culture,
http://ecommunity.uml.edu/bridge
He founded Loom Press in 1978
to publish books about his region and by writers from the area. For
information, visit
www.loompress.com or write to
info@loompress.com
In 2007, he was interviewed by
David Perry of the Sun newspaper in Lowell:
Poetry emotion - 10 Questions with Paul Marion, Lowell's unofficial
poet laureate. |
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