Reading Series 2022/23
Reading Series 2022/23
Every Friday: Wick Weekly Poetry Writing Workshops
Every Friday, 1:00 p.m. | Wick Poetry Center (in May Prentice House) Starting Sept. 2
Join the Wick Poetry Center student workers and interns for a free workshop each week. Wick Weekly invites Kent State students and community members to engage in informal writing prompts and activities. No prior writing experience is required.
Wick Weekly follows the Academic Calendar, and will not take place on days when the university is closed.
No registration is necessary.
Market Stanzas
Saturdays, Sept. 3, 17, 24, and Oct. 22 | from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. | Haymaker Farmers’ Market
Market Stanzas is a community arts project created by the Wick Poetry Center at in partnership with Haymaker Farmers’ Market in celebration of its 30th anniversary. Community members can share memories about the market, its vendors and volunteers, and the important way it serves the Kent community to the here or by visiting the Traveling Stanzas Poetry Makerspace at the market. Each visitor's contribution will add to a growing community poem: .
Market Stanzas is funded by generous grants from the Kent Rotary Foundation and the Ohio Arts Council.
CELEBRATING OUR OWN & OPEN MIC
Rescheduled!
NEW DATE, SAME LOCATION:
Wednesday, Sept. 28, 7 p.m. | Wick Poetry Corner in the University Library, 2nd floor
This event will spotlight the 2022 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.
Traveling Stanzas Poetry & Design Talk
Thursday, Sept. 15, 6 p.m. | Akron Art Museum (1 S. High St, Akron)
For 13 years, the Traveling Stanzas project with Wick Poetry Center has translated the creative expression of poets in our community into stunning works of visual art. New posters from this project will be on display starting 9/2. Join us for a conversation between the young poets and the poster designers.
Mapping akron - Expressive Writing workshop
Thursday, Sept. 15, 7 p.m. | Akron Art Museum (1 S. High St, Akron)
Following the presentation about Traveling Stanzas (see above), join Teaching Artists from the Wick Poetry Center for a writing and placemaking workshop from their new initiative “Mapping Akron.” In a yearlong series of creative writing and placemaking workshops with everyday Akronites, the Wick Poetry Center will build an interactive, digital map of Akron, which will explore individuals’ sense of place and home and contribute to the vital artistic ecosystem of the city.
The Mapping Akron project is funded by generous grants from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
Arts Impact Ohio Conference
Wednesday & Thursday, Oct. 5 & 6 | John S. Knight Center (77 E. Mill St, Akron)
Arts Impact Ohio is the Ohio Arts Council’s biennial statewide professional development conference. It provides relevant, action-oriented, forward-looking content for members of the state’s arts and cultural sector. The Traveling Stanzas Poetry Makerspace will be placed in the Goodyear Ballroom A and Maidenburg Concourse of the Knight Center.
Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize Reading Featuring Tracy K. Smith and Farnaz Fatemi
Thursday, Oct. 20, 7 p.m. | Kiva Auditorium
Cosponsor: Libraries
Tracy K. Smith
Tracy K. Smith received the 2012 Pulitzer Prize in poetry for her third book of poems, Life on Mars. The collection draws upon the genre of science fiction in considering who we humans are and what the vast universe holds for us. In poems of political urgency, tenderness, elegy and wit, Smith conjures version upon version of the future, imagines the afterlife, and contemplates life here on Earth in our institutions, cities, houses and hearts. Life on Mars was a New York Times Notable Book, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, and a New Yorker, Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year.
Farnaz Fatemi
Farnaz Fatemi is an Iranian American poet, editor and writing teacher in Santa Cruz, California. Her debut book, won the 2021 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize (selected by Tracy K. Smith) and is forthcoming from The Press. She is a member and co-founder of The Hive Poetry Collective, which presents a weekly radio show and podcast in Santa Cruz County and hosts readings and poetry-related events. Her poetry and prose appears in Poets.org (Poem-a-Day), Pedestal Magazine, Grist Journal, Catamaran Literary Reader, Crab Orchard Review, SWWIM Every Day, Tahoma Literary Review, Tupelo Quarterly, phren-z.org, and several anthologies (including, most recently, Essential Voices: Poetry of Iran and its Diaspora, My Shadow Is My Skin: Voices of the Iranian Diaspora and The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 3: Halal If You Hear Me).
The reading is funded by generous grants from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Pádraig Ó Tuama Poetry Reading
Due to an overwhelming response, we have changed the location to the Schwartz Center
Tuesday, Feb. 21, 7 p.m. | Schwartz Auditorium in the Schwartz Center (Room 177, 800 E. Summit Street, Kent, OH 44242)
The Wick Poetry Center, in collaboration with Kent State's School of Peace & Conflict Studies, and Peace, Justice, and Human Rights program at John Carroll University, will welcome renowned poet and theologian, Pádraig Ó Tuama, who will give a reading and host two workshops exploring themes of grief and loss.
Pádraig Ó Tuama is the host of On Being’s Poetry Unbound and the author of (among others) Poetry Unbound; 50 Poems to Open Your Life. He is poet-in-residence for Columbia University’s International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution, Ó Tuama brings insight as an artist and a practitioner to this important field of consideration in the world of peacemaking. From 2014-2019 he was the leader of Corrymeela, Ireland’s oldest reconciliation community.
The reading is funded by generous grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Coalition.
Co-sponsor: Libraries, KSU School of Peace & Conflict Studies
Mapping Akron: Celebratory Reading
Thursday, March 14, 6 p.m. | Akron Art Museum (1 S. High St, Akron)
Teaching Artists from the Wick Poetry Center will facilitate a writing and placemaking workshop from their new initiative “Mapping Akron.” In a yearlong series of creative writing and placemaking workshops with everyday Akronites, the Wick Poetry Center will build an interactive, digital map of Akron, which will explore individuals’ sense of place and home and contribute to the vital artistic ecosystem of the city. Check out the website and add your voice:
World Poetry Reading (Rescheduled from the Fall Semester)
Tuesday, March 21, 7 p.m. | Room 120, CAED (College of Architecture and Environmental Design)
On World Poetry Day, 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.
Poetry Reading Featuring Charles Malone & Jessica Jewell
Thursday, April 13, 7 p.m. | Murphy Auditorium in Rockwell Hall
Charles Malone is a Northeastern Ohio native who completed his B.A. and M.A. from Kent State before earning his MFA at Colorado State University. While in Colorado, Charlie taught poetry in the schools with Literacy Through Poetry and served on the staff of the Colorado Review and Matter Journal. In collaboration with Wolverine Farm Publishing, Charlie edited the anthology A Poetic Inventory of Rocky Mountain National Park. He is the author of the chapbook Questions about Circulation from Driftwood Press, the full-length collection Working Hypothesis from Finishing Line Press, and After an Eclipse of Moths, which won the Moonstone Arts Chapbook competition.
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 , where she also earned her Ph.D. and MFA.
Giving Voice
Location change: Room 306, Kent Student Center
Tuesday, May 2, 6:30 p.m. | Room 306, Kent Student Center
Giving Voice features local students (grades 3-12). All material is created in Wick outreach programs, including workshops led by undergraduates enrolled in the service-learning course “Teaching Poetry in the Schools.”