September 20, 2011
Celebrating Our Own
7:30 p.m.
Kiva Auditorium
Kent State Student Center
Undergraduate Winners
Mark Anthony Zurlo, 1st place
Christian O’Keeffe, 2nd place
Stephen Vanderpool, 3rd place
Natasha Rodriguez, 1st place honorable mention
Erin Miller, 2nd place honorable mention
High School Winners
Jennifer Walker, 1st place
Tyler Powell, 2nd place
Jamie Viall, 3rd place
Sarah McIntosh, honors scholarship award
October 10, 2011
2:00 p.m.
Informal question-and-answer session with W. S. Merwin and reception for the University Library's exhibition, "Doorway to the Work of W. S. Merwin."
University Library, first floor
7:30 p.m.
Reading by W. S. Merwin
Ballroom
Kent State Student Center
W. S. Merwin, U.S. Poet Laureate 2010–11, is the author of dozens of books of poetry and prose, including his first book of poems, A Mask for Janus (1952), selected by W. H. Auden for the Yale Young Poets Prize, and his most recent book of poems, Shadow of Sirius, awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2009. His work embodies a bold commitment to experimentation and transformation rooted in the moral necessity of bearing witness and is influenced by his profoundly environmentalist and pacifist beliefs. He has won many awards, as well as fellowships from the Rockefeller and the Guggenheim Foundations and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Cosponors of this event are the University Libraries, Honors College, English Department, Office of the Provost, and Institute for Applied Linguistics.
A discussion on selected poems of W. S. Merwin will take place Sunday, October 9, from 2–3:30 p.m. at the Kent Free Library. "Poetically Speaking: A Series of Conversations with the Wick Poetry Center" will be facilitated by David Hassler, director of the Wick Poetry Center. To register for this free event, call the library at (330) 673-4414.
November 15 and 16, 2011
2:15 p.m., Nov. 15
Informal question-and-answer session
Wick Poetry Corner
KSU Library, 2nd floor
7:30 p.m., Nov. 16
Reading by Maggie Anderson and Mira Rosenthal
Kiva Auditorium
Kent State Student Center
Maggie Anderson, judge of the 2010 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize, is the author of four books of poems, including Windfall: New and Selected Poems, A Space Filled with Moving, and Cold Comfort, and editor of four anthologies of poetry. She is professor emerita at Kent State University where she was the founder and director of the Wick Poetry Center and editor of the Wick Poetry Series of the Kent State University Press from 1992–2010. Anderson has received fellowships for her poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ohio Arts Council, the MacDowell Colony, and the West Virginia Arts and Humanities Commission.
Mira Rosenthal is the winner of the 2010 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize for her book The Local World. She is also the author of two volumes of poetry translations. Among her awards are fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the PEN American Center, the MacDowell Colony, and the Fulbright Commission. Her poems and translations have been published in many literary journals and anthologies, including Ploughshares, Slate, APR, West Branch, and A Public Space. Currently she is a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University.
Two discussions on selected poems of Anderson and Rosenthal will take before their reading. The first, facilitated by KSU instructors Alice Cone and Katherine Orr, will be held Sunday, November 13, from 2–3:30 p.m. at the Kent Free Library. The second will take place Tuesday, November 15, from 6:30–8:30 p.m. at the Coventry Library and will be led by Wick intern Ellie Shorey. Both discussions are free and open to the public.
January 26, 2012
Reading by Catherine Wing
7:30 p.m.
306 ABC
Kent State Student Center
Catherine Wing’s first book of poems, Enter Invisible, was published by Sarabande Books and was nominated for a 2005 Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Her poems have appeared in such journals as Poetry, The Nation, and The New Republic, as well as featured on the Writer’s Almanac, and included in Best American Erotic Poems, and Best American Poetry 2010. She has won fellowships and residencies from Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. Her second collection, Gin & Bleach, received the Linda Bruckheimer Series in Kentucky Literature and will be published in 2012. She lives in Ohio, where she teaches poetry at Kent State University and serves as the editor for the Wick Poetry Center’s Ohio Chapbook Series.
February 15, 2012
Reading by Jody Rambo and Elizabeth Breese
7:30 p.m.
306 ABC
Kent State Student Center
Jody Rambo holds an MFA from Colorado State University. Her chapbook, Tethering World, was a winner of the 2009 Wick Chapbook competition for Ohio poets. Rambo’s poems have appeared in Barrow Street, Colorado Review, Gulf Coast, Notre Dame Review, Quarterly West, Verse, Virginia Quarterly Review, and other journals. She teaches creative writing at Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio.
Elizabeth Breese’s chapbook, The Lonely-Wilds, was a winner of the 2009 Wick Chapbook competition for Ohio poets. She recently graduated from the MFA program at the Ohio State University. Her recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Hadyen’s Ferry Review, Barrow Street, and Field.
March 29, 2012
Reading by Yusef Komunyakaa
7:30 p.m.
Room 214
Oscar Ritchie Hall
Kent State University
Yusef Komunyakaa is the author of numerous books of poems, including The Chameleon Couch, Warhorses, Taboo, and Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems, for which he received the Pulitzer Prize. Komunyakaa is the recipient of many awards and prizes, including a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, and the William Faulkner Prize. He served as a Chancellor for the Academy of American Poets from 1999 to 2005 and is currently Professor and Distinguished Senior Poet at New York University.
Kent State University Libraries and the Department of Pan-African Studies will co-sponsor the event.
A discussion of Komunyakaa's poetry will take place on Sunday, March 25 from 2:00–3:30 at the Kent Free Library. Mwatabu Okantah, Assistant Professor and Poet-in-Residence in the Department of Pan-African Studies and Director of the Center of Pan-African Culture at Kent State, will lead the discussion. Packets of Komunyakaa's selected works will be available in advance; however, no previous knowledge of his work is necessary to attend the event. Advanced registration is recommended; contact the library at 330-673-4414 or email kflinfo@kentfreelibrary.org.
April 11, 2012
Humanism and the Healing Arts Conference: Poetry and Healing
8:00 a.m.–12:00 noon
Summa Akron City Hospital
Raymond Firestone Auditorium
55 Arch Street, Akron
John Fox, founder and director of the Institute for Poetic Medicine, will give the keynote lecture at the annual Humanism and the Healing Arts Conference, sponsored by Summa’s Institute for Professionalism Inquiry. Fox is a poet, poetry therapist, and author of Finding What You Didn’t Lose: Expressing Your Truth and Creativity through Poem-Making and Poetic Medicine: The Healing Art of Poem-Making. The conference will also feature a poetry reading by Summa Health System care providers who have participated in Wick outreach writing workshops. This conference is free and open to the public but registration is required. Please call Summa Connections at (800) 237-8662 to reserve your seat.
April 23, 2012
Giving Voice
6:00 p.m.
Ballroom
Kent State Student Center
The 11th annual performance of Giving Voice features area students (grades 3–12), senior citizens, veterans, medical care providers, and patients from area hospitals, performing original poetry with guest musician Hal Walker. All material is created in Wick outreach programs, including workshops led by Kent State University undergraduates enrolled in the course “Teaching Poetry in the Schools.”