Reading Series

 

Friebert Reading

STUART FRIEBERT POETRY READING

Sponsored by the Department of Modern & Classical Language Studies and the Institute for Applied Linguistics

7:30 pm | Wednesday, September 14, 2016
Kent State Student Center, Room 306 AB

Stuart Friebert is the author of fourteen collections of poetry, including Floating Heart, recipient of the Ohioana 2015 Poetry Award. He has published ten volumes of translations, including Puppets in the Wind: Selected Poems of Karl Krolow, and Be Quiet: Selected Poems by Kuno Raeber. He founded the writing program at Oberlin College and co-founded FIELD and the Oberlin College Press. Friebert has won many awards for his poems and translations, including an NEA Fellowship.

STUART FRIEBERT TRANSLATION WORKSHOP

1:00-3:00 pm | Thursday and Friday, September 15 and 16, 2016
The workshop is free and open to all. 


Kent Creativity Festival

KENT CREATIVITY FESTIVAL

Presented by the City of Kent in collaboration with Kent State University

11:00 am - 5:00 pm
 | Saturday, September 24, 2016
Lester A. Lefton Esplanade outside of the May Prentice House

The Kent community invites you to join us for the inaugural Kent Creativity Festival! This will be an opportunity for people of all ages and skill levels to come together to create, share, and explore the creation of all kinds of art. The event will take place on Saturday, September 24, 2016, from 11 am to 5 pm on the Lester A. Lefton Esplanade outside of the May Prentice House and the Wick Poetry Center.


Strip First Book ReadingTHE STAN AND TOM WICK POETRY PRIZE READING WITH ​ADRIAN MATEJKA & LEAH OSOWSKI


7:30 pm
 | Wednesday, September 28, 2016
College of Architecture & Environmental Design, Room 120

Adrian Matejka was born in Nuremberg, Germany and grew up in California and Indiana. He is a graduate of Indiana University and the MFA program at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. His first collection of poems, The Devil’s Garden, won the 2002 New York / New England Award from Alice James Books. His second collection, Mixology, was a winner of the 2008 National Poetry Series and was published by Penguin Books in 2009. Mixology was a finalist for a NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literature – Poetry. His most recent book, The Big Smoke, was awarded the 2014 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. The Big Smoke was also finalist for the 2013 National Book Award and for the 2014 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. He is a winner of the Julia Peterkin Award and recipient of two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Lannan Foundation. His work has appeared in American Poetry ReviewThe Best American Poetry 2010Gulf CoastPloughsharesPoetry, and Prairie Schooner among other journals and anthologies. He teaches in the MFA program at Indiana University in Bloomington and is currently working on a new collection of poems and a graphic novel.

Leah Poole Osowski is from Massachusetts. She received an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of North Carolina Wilmington where she was a reader for Ecotone magazine. Her first book hover over her won the 2015 Wick Poetry Prize, chosen by Adrian Matejka. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Black Warrior ReviewThe Cincinnati ReviewHotel AmerikaThe JournalMid-American ReviewSalamander, and Third Coast, among others.


World Poetry Reading

WORLD POETRY READING

7:30 pm | Tuesday, November 15, 2016

College of Architecture & Environmental Design, Room 120 (132 S Lincoln St, Kent, OH 44240)

Kent State international students and staff/faculty members from fifteen different countries will share poems they love from their own cultures facilitating a global conversation through the intimate and inclusive voice of poetry.


Cunningham and Baez Reading

POETRY TALK AND Q&A WITH P. SCOTT CUNNINGHAM - HOW TO TAKE OUT THE WORDS OUT OF A POEM

11:00 am 
| Wednesday, November 16, 2016
Wick Poetry Center

Join P. Scott Cunningham, the founder and director of O, Miami, for a poetry talk and Q&A about his innovative ways to bring poetry to the Miami community.

 

P. SCOTT CUNNINGHAM AND FRANK BÁEZ POETRY READING

7:30 pm 
| Wednesday, November 16, 2016
College of Architecture & Environmental Design, Room 120 (132 S Lincoln St, Kent, OH 44240)

P. Scott Cunningham is the founder and director of O, Miami, a poetry festival with the goal of every single person in Miami-Dade County encountering a poem. O, Miami events and projects have been featured in The New York TimesThe New YorkerThe Washington Post, National Public Radio, ESPN, TimeThe Guardian, and many others, and the organization was named by Fast Company as one of 51 “brilliant urban ideas that are changing America.” Cunningham is also the co-founder and editor of Jai-Alai Books, a regional literary publishing imprint, and the poetry editor of The Miami Rail. His poems, essays, and translations have appeared in Harvard ReviewThe AwlA Public SpaceRHINOLos Angeles Review of BooksTupelo QuarterlyMonocle, and The Guardian, among others. A graduate of Wesleyan University, he lives in Miami with his wife Christina.

Frank Báez is a Dominican poet and writer. He has published three books of poetry, one of short stories and three books of chronicles. Postales was edited in five countries and was awarded the National Prize for Poetry Salome Ureña in 2009. In 2014 Jai Alai books published an anthology in English of his poetry titled Last Night I Dreamt I was a DJ. In 2015 he  was part of the anthology El canon abierto (última poesía en español) that brings together the most relevant Spanish-language poets born after 1970. It is member of the group El Hombrecito, (www.elhombrecito.com) with whom he has released two albums and a DVD.


TERRANCE HAYES
 POETRY READING

In collaboration with the NEOMFA Consortium

7:00 pm 
| Tuesday, December 6, 2016
The Kiva Auditorium


Terrance Hayes is the author of How to Be Drawn; Lighthead, which won the 2010 National Book Award for poetry; Muscular Music, which won the Kate Tufts Discovery Award; Hip Logic, winner of the 2001 National Poetry Series, and Wind in a Box. He is a professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh, in Pennsylvania.


LESLEY JENIKE
 POETRY READING

7:30 pm | Thursday, March 9, 2017
Kent State Student Center, Room 306 AB

Lesley Jenike's poems have appeared in PoetryThe Gettysburg ReviewThe Southern ReviewSmartish PaceRattle, and many other journals, and her second collection, Holy Island, was published by Gold Wake Press in 2014. She's been the recipient of fellowships and scholarships from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Vermont Studio Center, the Sewanee Writers' Conference, and the Ohio Arts Council. She teaches writing and literature at the Columbus College of Art and Design.  


Celebrating Our Own

CELEBRATING OUR OWN POETRY READING
 FEATURING THE POETRY SCHOLARSHIP WINNERS

7:30 pm | Wednesday, March 22, 2017

Kent Student Center | Room 317

Celebrating Our Own is the Wick Poetry Center’s annual undergraduate and high school scholarship poetry reading. Selected by poet Matthew Minicucci, the winners of the 2016 undergraduate scholarships are Lydia Leclerc, Victoria Bracher, and Ben Baumgardner. The 2016 high school scholarship winners are Molly Davidson and Taylor Patterson.


Juan Felipe Herrara


QUESTION & ANSWER SESSION WITH JUAN FELIPE HERRERA


Co-Sponsored by the University Library

1:00 pm 
| Tuesday, April 4, 2017
University Library Quiet Study Area 
 

6TH ANNUAL U.S. POET LAUREATE READING FEATURING JUAN FELIPE HERRERA



Co-Sponsored by the University Library 

7:30 pm | Tuesday, April 4, 2017
The 
Kiva Auditorium

Juan Felipe Herrera is the 21st Poet Laureate of the United States (2015-2016) and is the first Latino to hold the position. From 2012-2014, Herrera served as California State Poet Laureate. Herrera’s many collections of poetry include Notes on the AssemblageSenegal TaxiHalf of the World in Light: New and Selected Poems, a recipient of the PEN/Beyond Margins Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award; and 187 Reasons Mexicanos Can’t Cross The Border: Undocuments 1971-2007. He is also the author of Crashboomlove: A Novel in Verse, which received the Americas Award. His books of prose for children include: SkateFateCalling The Doves, which won the Ezra Jack Keats Award; Upside Down Boy, which was adapted into a musical for young audiences in New York City; and Cinnamon Girl: Letters Found Inside a Cereal Box. Herrera is also a performance artist and activist on behalf of migrant and indigenous communities and at-risk youth.


Giving Voice

16TH ANNUAL GIVING VOICE

6:30 pm
 | Wednesday, May 3, 2017
University Ballroom

The 16th annual performance of Giving Voice features local students (grades 3-12), international students, and families from Akron and Kent. All material is created in Wick outreach programs, including workshops funded by the Knight Foundation, and workshops led by Kent State University undergraduates enrolled in the service-learning course “Teaching Poetry in the Schools.”


2015-2016 Reading Series