Peter Abbs, will be presented a talk, ART IN THE AGE OF ECOLOGY, and guided a Symposium on the topic afterward. Peter was accompanied by writer, educator and poet, Lisa Dart. During the four day period they were at the Center both Lisa and Peter read their poetry and conducted round table discussions and open forums with the students.

I am extremely pleased to introduce Peter Abbs to all the friends, colleagues, and associates of the Aegean Center who share our vision for a creative and plenary program in the arts. Peter Abbs is a poet and a teacher, as well as one of the pre-eminent voices on aesthetic education in our time. I first read his words over ten years ago and they continue to inspire and encourage my pursuit in creating an innovative educational program in the arts. Peter Abbs is Professor of Creative Writing in The Graduate Research Centre in the Humanities at the University of Sussex, England, and now a Visitng Fellow at the Aegean Center and co-founder of the Aegean Center Academy.

I am also very proud to announce the collaboration with Peter Abbs in creating a "New Curricula for the New Millennium" for our newly formed affiliate organization, The Aegean Center Academy. I have been working towards this goal for many years, and having celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Aegean Center, its time has come. A complete and panoptic education must have a greater purpose and inspiration other than the purely academic model or the "bottom line", education as big business. We are crafting a curricula that will help educate the whole mind, as well as the whole person and will give great attention to the development of Eco Education within the arts. It is all very exciting and I hope all of you will somehow be involved.

Peter Abbs teaches on the MA Creative and Critical Writing, on the MA in Literature, Religion and Philosophy and on the D.Phil Programme of Creative Writing in the School of Humanities. He is the author of seven volumes of poetry. Dana Gioia, the American critic, has called him 'the rarest of writers -a philosophical poet with a genuine lyrical gift'. He has lectured on poetics and given poetry readings across Britain as well as in Australia, Scandinavia, India and the USA. He is the Poetry Editor of the ecological arts magazine Resurgence and editor of Earth Songs (Green Books, 2002), one of the first anthologies of contemporary Anglo-American eco-poetry. His defence of eco-poetics was recently published in the international magazine Planet (No 164, 2004). He has also written widely on the nature of creativity, aesthetics and the place of the arts in education. His book The Forms of Poetry (Cambridge University Press) is widely used to promote creative writing in schools and colleges. He is editor of the Falmer Press Library of Aesthetic Education and is currently on the Advisory Board of the International Journal of Education and the Arts (USA). His most recent publication Against the Flow: education,the arts and postmodern culture(RoutledgeFalmer,2003) is a spirited polemic against the present state of education and its instrumental imperatives. He has contributed poems and articles to many papers and journals including: The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, The Independent, The Times Higher Education Supplement, The London Magazine, International Review, The Journal of Aesthetic Education, Planet, Agenda, Acumen, Stand, Poetry Wales, and Temenos Academy Review.

Peter's main research interests concerns changing notions of the self within Western Culture. The study begins with Sappho and Heraclitus and moves forward to the present postmodern deconstruction of the self. The key to the study will be the analysis of personal documents, but especially autobiography. Seminal figures in the analysis are Augustine, Rousseau and Nietzsche. Other research interests include the notion of poetics, aesthetic education and the nature of creativity.

John Pack