Reading Series
Wednesday, SEPTEMBER 14, 2016
Stuart Friebert
Poetry Reading
Sponsored by the Department of Modern & Classical Language Studies and the Institute for Applied Linguistics
7:30 pm
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.
Thursday, SEPTEMBER 15, 2016
Stuart Friebert
Translation Workshop
1:00 pm
May Prentice House
Saturday, September 24, 2016
Kent Creativity Festival
Presented by the City of Kent in collaboration with Kent State University
11:00 am – 5:00 pm
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.
WEDNESDAY, september 28, 2016
Adrian Matejka & Leah Osowski
The Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize Reading
7:30 pm
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 Review, The Best American Poetry 2010, Gulf Coast, Ploughshares, Poetry, 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 Review, The Cincinnati Review, Hotel Amerika, The Journal, Mid-American Review, Salamander, and Third Coast, among others.
Thursday, NOVEMBER 3, 2016
Veteran’s Art Exhibit & Poetry Reading
5:00 pm
Oscar Ritchie Hall
Tuesday, November 15, 2016
World Poetry Reading
Traveling Stanzas
7:30 pm
College of Architecture & Environmental Design, Room 120
Kent State international students from eleven different countries will share poems they love from their own cultures facilitating a global conversation through the intimate and inclusive voice of poetry.
Wednesday, November 16, 2016
P. Scott Cunningham and Frank Báez
Poetry Reading
7:30 pm
College of Architecture & Environmental Design, Room 120
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 Times, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, National Public Radio, ESPN, Time, The 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 Review, The Awl, A Public Space, RHINO, Los Angeles Review of Books, Tupelo Quarterly, Monocle, 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.
Tuesday, DECEMBER 6, 2016
Terrance Hayes
Poetry Reading
In collaboration with the NEOMFA Consortium
7:00 pm
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.
Thursday, March 9, 2017
Lesley Jenike
Poetry Reading
7:30 pm
Kent State Student Center, Room 306 AB
Lesley Jenike's poems have appeared in Poetry, The Gettysburg Review, The Southern Review, Smartish Pace, Rattle, 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.
WEDNESDAY, March 22, 2017
Celebrating Our Own Poetry Reading
featuring the Poetry Scholarship Winners
7:30 pm
Fashion Building, Rockwell Auditorium
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.
Tuesday, April 4, 2017
Juan Felipe Herrera
Question & Answer Session
Co-Sponsored by the University Library
1:00 pm
University Library Quiet Study Area
Tuesday, April 4, 2017
Juan Felipe Herrera
6th Annual U.S. Poet Laureate Reading
Co-Sponsored by the University Library
7:30 pm
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 Assemblage; Senegal Taxi; Half 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: SkateFate, Calling 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.
Wednesday, MAY 3, 2017
16th Annual Giving Voice
6:30 pm
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.”