Writer Paul O’Brien met with the Cole Summer Writers Institute writers on the morning of July 16, 2025. The students, despite the hot and sticky conditions, wrote, listened, and shared their writing with O’Brien as he led them through a morning filled with poetry, anecdotes, and writing. The students shared their happiness at the visit, stating that they particularly appreciated the personal connection he made with their writing, actually doing the assignments he assigned and laughing and talking with them as they read their work. The only complaint: not enough time in a packed morning to ask all of the questions they had for him!
Paul is the author of seven books of poetry and nonfiction. He taught for 47 years at Norte Dame-Bishop Gibbons high school in Schenectady, New York, where he guided thousands of students through the complexities of AP English Literature and Senior English. As a side note, he was also my first department chair, and being so gave me my initial break into teaching, a debt I still owe him. His kind, gentle, erudite leadership was something I have tried to emulate in my own experience as a department chair here at Clayton A. Bouton High School.
Enjoy the pictures of Paul’s morning with us. He left us with a reading of Richard Wilbur’s poem, “The Writer,” which sums up a lot for both of us. In that poem the narrator describes his thinking about the importance of writing. Here is the final stanza of that poem:
“It is always a matter, my darling,
Of life or death, as I had forgotten. I wish
What I wished you before, but harder.”
The Cole Summer Writers Institute 