24/06/2023
We were greatly saddened to hear this week of the death of our Founding Editor, Peter Makuck, who passed away on Wednesday morning after a long fight with leukemia and Hodgkins lymphoma.
For its first eighteen years, TRP was called “Tar River Poets,” and it published members of the ECU Poetry Forum only. It was a local venue for local poets. Peter changed that. When he took over in 1978, he immediately updated the name to “Tar River Poetry,” and though he had never met William Stafford, he wrote and asked him to submit some poems—and Stafford, by then a National Book Award winner and former Library of Congress / US Poet Laureate, kindly obliged. Peter’s very first issue opens with four poems by Stafford, and also includes work by nationally-known poets Susan Fromberg Shaeffer and Lyn Lifshin, and future North Carolina Poet Laureate Shelby Stephenson.
Peter edited from 1978 until his retirement in 2006—28 years, 56 issues—and he quickly built the journal into a nationally ranked publication, publishing scores and scores of famous and established poets right beside emerging writers, and he gave many poets their first ever publication. Quality was his only criterion. Even today, current editor Luke Whisnant says that when he’s reading submissions and is on the fence about a poem, he thinks, “Would Peter publish this?” We will miss Peter terribly, but we still feel his hand on the tiller, and we know that Peter Makuck will continue to guide Tar River Poetry.
Photo: the cover of Peter’s first issue, Fall 1978.
