University Park, PA -- In commemoration of Black History Month, an exhibition "A Jamaican Voice: The Life and Poetry of Vivian Virtue" is on display February 4 through March 15, 2002, in the Special Collections Library, 104 Paterno Library, University Park.

Selected from The Vivian Virtue Papers, the display includes manuscripts, correspondence, publications, translations, broadcast scripts, and photographs of this Jamaican poet, translator, and broadcaster.

After the publication of his only full book of poems Wings of the Morning, printed in Jamaica in 1938, Virtue was hailed in the 1930s and 1940s as the successor to Claude McKay, the Jamaican national poet and Virtue's father-in-law. Virtue was an active member of the Jamaica Centre of the International P.E.N. Club and a frequent broadcaster on the BBC's "Caribbean Voices" radio program. Prominent correspondents in the Virtue Papers include Harlem Renaissance poets Claude McKay and Langston Hughes.

The Vivian Virtue Papers was a recent gift to Rare Books and Manuscripts from Alan McLeod, a Penn State Ph.D. and now Emeritus Professor of English and Speech at Rider University in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. After writing an article on Virtue, McLeod carried on a long correspondence with the poet until Virtue's death in 1998. When Virtue died, he left his manuscripts and literary effects to McLeod.

Exhibit hours are 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Monday through Friday. For more information, contact Sandra Stelts, Special Collections Library, at sks@psulias.psu.edu or 814-863-5388.