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Reading Series 2018/2019

Poetry Reading with Urban Vision Students at the Akron Art Museum

Date: 6:00 pm | Thursday, September 13, 2018
Location: Akron Art Museum 1 South High Street Akron, OH 44308

Poetry Reading with Wick Poetry Center and Urban Vision below the Nasser Al-Salem Arabi/Gharbi neon installation in the lobby of the . Stay and tour the exhibition FRONT: An American City after the reading.
Register for free .

Kent Creativity Festival

Date: 11:00 am - 5:00 pm | Saturday, September 29, 2018
Location: Lester A. Lefton Esplanade outside of the May Prentice House,  Poetry Park

The Kent community invites you to join us for the second 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 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize Reading Featuring Khaled Mattawa + Michael McKee Green

Date: 7:30 pm | Thursday, October 4, 2018
Location: Room 120, CAED (College of Architecture and Environmental Design, 132 S Lincoln St, Kent, OH 44240)

A recipient of awards and grants from the Academy of American Poets and the Cabin Literary Center, Michael McKee Green is a 2018 artist in residence at the Boise Public Library at Bown Crossing. Poems of his appear in journals such as Michigan Quarterly Review, Tagvverk and Fog Machine, and his poem "In Remit" won the Burnam Poetry Scholarship (Judge, Ed Skoog). Currently, he is an MFA candidate at Boise State University, where he sits on Ahsahta Press’ editorial board and teaches creative writing.

Khaled Mattawa was born in Benghazi, Libya, in 1964 and immigrated to the United States in his teens. His collections of poetry include Tocqueville (New Issues, 2010), Amorisco (Ausable, 2008), Zodiac of Echoes (Ausable, 2003), and Ismailia Eclipse (Sheep Meadow Press, 1995). He is also the author of Mahmoud Darwish: The Poet’s Art and His Nation (Syracuse University Press, 2014). Mattawa has also translated many volumes of contemporary Arabic poetry and coedited two anthologies of Arab American literature. Mattawa is the 2010 recipient of the Academy of American Poets Fellowship. He has received a Guggenheim fellowship, a translation grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Alfred Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University, the PEN American Center Poetry Translation Prize, three Pushcart Prizes, and a MacArthur Fellowship. In 2014, Mattawa was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. Currently, Mattawa teaches in the graduate creative writing program at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Poets + Painters

Date: 6:00 - 8:30 pm | Friday, October 19, 2018
Location: Group Ten Gallery (201 E Erie St, Kent, OH 44240)

A collaboration of words and art between the artists of the Group Ten Gallery and the Wick Poetry Center.

Celebrating Our Own + Open Mic Poetry Night

Date: 7:30 pm | Wednesday, October 24, 2018
Location: Room 306 ABC, Kent Student Center

Come Celebrate poetry with us by sharing your poems and discovering the new voices around you.

World Poetry Reading

Date: 7:30 pm | Wednesday, November 14, 2018
Location: Room 120, CAED (College of Architecture and Environmental Design, 132 S Lincoln St, Kent, OH 44240)

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

Traveling Stanzas Interactive Exhibit

Date: January 24-February 24, 2019
Location: Taylor Hall

The 2018-2019 school year marks the 10th anniversary of our Traveling Stanzas project. What began as a collaboration between ������’s Wick Poetry Center and Professor Valora Renicker’s Visual Communication Design students has evolved into a leading international poetry exhibit pioneering state-of-the-art digital tools. With Traveling Stanzas, the Wick Poetry Center is at the forefront of a national movement to pair technology with art as a means to increase access to creative expression, encouraging new voices in poetry and facilitating meaningful conversations in communities around the world. 

George Bilgere Poetry Reading — Co-sponsored by NEOMFA

Date: 7:30 pm | Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Location: Room 306 ABC, Kent Student Center

George Bilgere's seventh collection of poetry, Blood Pages, was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in 2018. He has given readings for the Library of Congress, the 92nd Street Y in New York, A Prairie Home Companion, and at schools and literary venues all over the country. He has received a Pushcart Prize, grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Ohio Arts Council, the Midland Authors Prize, the May Swenson Poetry Prize, and the Fulbright Foundation. Former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins has called Bilgere's work "a welcome breath of fresh air in the house of American poetry." He teaches at John Carroll University in Cleveland.

Kate Daniels Poetry Reading— Sponsored by Ralph and Judy Kletzien

Date: 7:30 pm | Thursday, April 18, 2019
Location: Room 310, Kent Student Center

Kate Daniels was born in Richmond, Virginia. The first in her family to graduate from college, Daniels earned a BA and an MA from the University of Virginia and an MFA from Columbia University. She converted to Catholicism as an adult, and her often lengthy, narrative poems engage engages themes of working class experience, family, trauma, racism, and Southern culture. Daniels has won the Hanes Award for Poetry from the Fellowship of Southern Writers, a Pushcart Prize, the Louisiana Literature Prize for Poetry, the James Dickey Prize, the Crazyhorse Prize for Poetry, and fellowships from the Lannan Foundation and Harvard University's Bunting Institute. Her work has been widely anthologized, including in Best American Poetry. She has taught at Bennington College, Louisiana State University, the University of Virginia, and Wake Forest University. Currently she is professor of English and creative writing at Vanderbilt University.

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18th annual Giving Voice

Date: 6:30 pm | Thursday, May 2, 2019
Location: Ballroom, Kent Student Center

The 18th annual performance of Giving Voice features local students (grades 3-12), ������ undergraduate students, and community members performing original poetry. All material is created in Wick outreach programs, including workshops led by ������ undergraduates enrolled in the service-learning course “Teaching Poetry in the Schools.”

Reading Series 2017-18 Reading Series 2015-16    Reading Series 2016-17

Click below to download the Reading Series Flier 2018/19