A date with slate — and fate

Dead Poets Society founder to get specially designed tombstone of his own

The founder of the Dead Poets Society of America is preparing for when he’ll be a dead poet himself — by getting a tombstone. Walter Skold is drawing inspiration from his visits to the graves of more than 600 bards for his own tombstone to be carved by the son of novelist John Updike.

The design created in collaboration with Michael Updike in Newburyport, Mass., represents a poignant and humorous mishmash inspired by the graves of poets including John Keats, Herman Melville, Elizabeth Frost and Frances Osgood.

“At 57, I have outlived lots of poets, so now is a good time to have my tombstone carved,” Skold said.

One day, he said, it will be placed on his final resting place at his family’s plot in York, Penn.

Skold, who’s moving from Freeport, Maine, to Pennsylvania, has documented the final resting places of hundreds of American poets since he launched the Dead Poets Society in 2008. The society’s name was inspired by the 1989 Robin Williams movie about a teacher who inspires students to love poetry.

He said his goal all along was to draw attention to dead and largely forgotten bards. Along the way, he has produced the largest single repository of information on poets’ final resting places, along with an online equivalent of Poet’s Corner that honours poets and writers at England’s Westminster Abbey, said Deidre Shauna Lynch, an English professor from Harvard University.

Skold’s original goal was to visit 500 gravesites. He far surpassed that by visiting 627 gravesites

Updike, a sculptor and stone carver, was commissioned to create a tombstone that’s both contemplative and irreverent.

Topped with a dancing skeleton and a quill, it will merge traditional and modern styles, Latin and Hebrew letters, Greek Muses and a biblical quote from St. Paul.

It will be carved on a piece of slate rescued from a pool table. Skold said it’s appropriate that it’s being carved in New England, where many tombstones are carved from slate.

He hopes there’s an appreciation for some of the dark humour.

For example, the bottom of the tombstone that’ll be covered with dirt will carry these words: “This here rock’s a talking stone just like Walt, who’s turned to bone.”