Passion for Poetry: Scholarship named after Imogene L. Bolls

By Nathan Bolls on July 18, 2013

Imogene Lamb Bolls, the late wife of Meadowlark Hills resident, Nathan Bolls, had five goals in life; to be a loving and devoted wife, a loving and patient mother, a trusted friend, a successful university professor of literature and writing and a published poet of note. She achieved all of these a quite high level.

Imogene grew up in Manhattan, earned her undergraduate degree from K-State, and did her graduate work in comparative English literature at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, earning her master’s degree with distinction in 1962. She and Nathan were married in 1962, Nathan completed his doctoral program in zoology and physiology at K-State in 1963, and both of them held faculty chairs at Wittenberg University—a private liberal arts institution in Springfield, OH, from September 1963 until retirement in 1999. They retired to Taos, NM, in their beloved western mountains, and lived there ten years before Imogene’s failing health prompted them to move to Meadowlark Hills, a move they had planned for, but for many years hence.

At Wittenberg, Imogene offered courses in comparative English literature, women’s literature, creative writing/poetry and journalism. Many of her students went on to graduate school in literature and creative writing. She was resident poet for many years, and published some 600 poems in her three books and in literary journals and anthologies. She gave readings or workshops in several states. She also designed and directed the journalism program at the university and taught the two-course sequence. Her journalism students often gained admission to top rank graduate schools. All of her classes typically had a waiting list, and she always was awarded highest merit when annual pay raises were being computed.

Soon after Imogene’s passing in December 2010, her family established the Imogene Lamb Bolls Creative Writing Scholarship in Poetry at Wittenberg. This scholarship, which celebrates Imogene’s passion for poetry, is awarded to an upper class student who has shown both an abiding interest in poetry and a talent for writing in that genre.