Reading Series 2020/21

Spring 2021 Events + Workshops

Dust Hypothesis

Dust Hypothesis Featuring Jessica Jewell + Charles Malone

Thursday, January 21, 7:00 pm EST

Jessica Jewell is the author of three collections of poetry: Dust Runner; Sisi and the Girl from Town; and Slap Leather. She is the co-editor of the bilingual collection, I Hear the World Sing. She has published widely in both academic and literary journals. Jewell is the senior academic program director for the Wick Poetry Center at Kent State University, where she also earned her PhD and MFA.

Charles Malone grew up in rural Northeastern Ohio, headed west to the Rockies, came back to the Great Lakes, and has loved all of it. His full-length collection Working Hypothesis is out with Finishing Line Press. It is a book that is interested in wonder, curiosity, play, and science. His chapbook Questions About Circulation is out with Driftwood Press as part of the Adrift Chapbook Series. He edited the collection A Poetic Inventory of Rocky Mountain National Park with Wolverine Farm Publishing. Charles now works at the Wick Poetry Center at Kent State University coordinating community outreach programs.

Black Voices Matter Workshops + Open Mic

Workshops: Friday, January 29, February 1, February 5, February 12, and February 19, 6 pm EST
Open Mic: Thursday, February 26, 7:30 pm EST

The Black Voices Matter project is in support of racial justice at Kent State University and around the globe. As an expression of solidarity for the Black Lives Matter social movement against police brutality and racially motivated violence against black people, we invite people from around the world to contribute a line or stanza in response to poet and activist Sonia Sanchez’s poem, “This is Not a Small Voice.” You don’t need to have any previous writing experience to participate in the workshops and open mic.

A Collaboration between the Wick Poetry Center, the Division of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and the Department of Pan-African Studies at Kent State University.

Register for the Open Mic Register for the Workshop Watch Youtube livestream Black Voices Matter Growing Community Poem with Prompts

Empathy and Action: Finding Creativity After Addiction Featuring Darren C. Demaree

Workshop: Wednesday, February 10, 5:30 pm EST
Reading + Q&A: Wednesday, February 10, 7:00 pm EST

Darren C. Demaree grew up in Mount Vernon, Ohio. He is a graduate of the College of Wooster, Miami University, and Kent State University. He is the author of fifteen poetry collections, most recently Burning It Down, (December 2020, 8th House Publishing). He is the recipient of a 2018 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, the Louise Bogan Award from Trio House Press, and the Nancy Dew Taylor Award from Emrys Journal. He is the Editor-in-chief of the Best of the Net Anthology and Managing Editor of Ovenbird Poetry. He is currently working in the Columbus Metropolitan Library system, and living in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.

Cosponsors: United Church of Christ, Judy & Ralph Kletzien

Untranslatable: An Ode to the Mother Tongue

Workshops: Thursday, February 11, 5 pm EST + Wednesday, February 24, 10 am EST
Open Mic: Friday, February 19, 7 pm EST

Join the Wick Poetry Center and Gerald H. Reed Center for creative writing workshops and an open mic reading designed to celebrate the intersection of language and culture. In honor of International Mother Language day on February 21st, we’ll recognize our linguistic diversity and explore the connection between language, culture, memory, and self-expression with an interactive online poetry tool.
The Gerald H. Read Center for International and Intercultural Education and the Wick Poetry Center at Kent State University launched the "Untranslatable: An Ode to the Mother Tongue", an interactive online poetry project in honor of the International Mother Tongue Day. Two workshops will accompany the Open Mic (one before and one after the Open Mic).

Cosponsor: The Gerald H. Read Center for International and Intercultural Education

Padraig

Writing What We Notice Featuring Pádraig Ó Tuama

Workshop: Wednesday, March 17, 5 pm EST
Reading: Thursday, March 18, 5 pm EST

Irish poet and theologian Pádraig Ó Tuama’s work centers around themes of language, power, conflict and religion. He is the author of four books of poetry and prose: Daily Prayer with the Corrymeela Community, In the Shelter, Sorry for your Troubles, and Readings from the Books of Exile. He presents the podcast Poetry Unbound with On Being Studios, where he also has responsibilities in bringing art and theology into public and civic life. From 2014-2019 he was the leader of the Corrymeela Community, Ireland’s oldest peace and reconciliation community. He is based in Ireland

Cosponsors: KSU School of Peace & Conflict Studies and The John Carroll University Peace, Justice, and Human Rights Program

Naomi

Poetry Workshop + Reading Featuring Naomi Shihab Nye

Workshop: Wednesday, April 7, 5:30 pm EST
Reading + Q&A: Wednesday, April 7, 7:00 pm EST

Naomi Shihab Nye is the author and/or editor of more than 30 volumes. Her books of poetry include 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East (finalist for the National Book Award), A Maze Me: Poems for Girls, Red Suitcase, Words Under the Words, Fuel, and You & Yours. Other works include several prize-winning poetry anthologies for young readers, including Time You Let Me In, This Same Sky, The Space Between Our Footsteps: Poems & Paintings from the Middle East, What Have You Lost?, and Transfer. Her collection of poems for young adults entitled Honeybee won the 2008 Arab American Book Award in the Children’s/Young Adult category. Her novel for children, The Turtle of Oman, was chosen both a Best Book of 2014 by The Horn Book and a 2015 Notable Children's Book by the American Library Association. Naomi Shihab Nye has been a Lannan Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow and a Witter Bynner Fellow (Library of Congress). She has received a Lavan Award from the Academy of American Poets, the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award, the Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award, the Paterson Poetry Prize, four Pushcart Prizes, the Robert Creeley Prize and "The Betty Prize" from Poets House, for service to poetry, and numerous honors for her children’s literature, including two Jane Addams Children’s Book Awards. She has been affiliated with The Michener Center for writers at the University of Texas at Austin for 20 years and also poetry editor at The Texas Observer for 20 years. In January 2010 Nye was elected to the Board of Chancellors of the Academy of American Poets. She was recently named laureate of the 2013 NSK Neustadt Award for Children’s Literature.

Giving Voice

Tuesday, April 27, 6:00 pm EST

Conversation and sharing with teaching artists from "Teaching Poetry in The Schools" class.

Fall 2020 Programming

Student Open Mic

Date: Thursday, Nov. 5, 2020 | 7 p.m.

Online Event

The Wick Poetry Center presents the first virtual reading of 2020 and invites Kent State University students and community members to share a poem or short piece of prose. All are welcome and no experience is necessary, though we ask you keep your reading to under two minutes as to allow for as many readers as possible.

THE STAN AND TOM WICK POETRY PRIZE READING FEATURING Natalie Diaz and Alfredo Aguilar

Date: Thursday, Nov. 12, 2020 | 7 p.m.

Online Event

Alfredo Aguilar is the son of Mexican immigrants. He is the author of On This Side of the Desert, selected by Natalie Diaz for the 2019 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize, and the chapbook What Happens On Earth (BOAAT Press 2018). He is a recipient of 92Y’s Discovery Poetry Contest and has been awarded fellowships from MacDowell, the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, and the Frost Place. His work has appeared in The Shallow Ends, Best New Poets 2017, The Adroit Journal, and elsewhere. Originally from North County San Diego, he now resides in Central Texas.

Natalie Diaz was born and raised in the Fort Mojave Indian Village in Needles, California, on the banks of the Colorado River. She is Mojave and an enrolled member of the Gila River Indian Tribe. Her first poetry collection, When My Brother Was an Aztec, was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2012. She is 2018 MacArthur Foundation Fellow, a Lannan Literary Fellow and a Native Arts Council Foundation Artist Fellow. She was awarded a Bread Loaf Fellowship, the Holmes National Poetry Prize, a Hodder Fellowship, and a PEN/Civitella Ranieri Foundation Residency, as well as being awarded a US Artists Ford Fellowship. Diaz teaches at the Arizona State University Creative Writing MFA program.

CELEBRATING OUR OWN & OPEN MIC

Date: Thursday, December 3, 2020 | 7:30 p.m.

Online Event

This event will spotlight the 2020 Wick Poetry Center scholarship winners. Each winner will have the opportunity to share their work. An open mic, in which anyone is welcome to read, will follow. Come celebrate poetry with us by sharing your poems and discovering the new voices around you.

Reading Series 2019-20 Reading Series 2018-19 Reading Series 2017-18 Reading Series 2015-16 Reading Series 2016-1

Reading Series 2020/21