Swansea, Charleen

Charleen Swansea, eldest child of Henry and Elvilee Swanzey, was born in Charlotte, N.C., on 27 May 1933. She worked through high school selling false teeth manufactured by her father. She was graduated from Meredith College in Raleigh, N.C., in 1954 with a B.A. in Latin and English. In the winter of 1954, Swansea began corresponding with poet Ezra Pound, then at St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington, D.C. Pound had been declared unfit to stand trial for treason resulting from his support of Italian Fascism. Pound and Swansea corresponded frequently in 1955 and continued writing until around 1960.

Swansea graduated from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, in 1956 with an M.A. in Modern Poetry. In summer 1956, she married the architect Murray Whisnant. Swansea became an instructor of English at UNC for one year before moving back to Charlotte, where she taught at Queens College until 1964.

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