Kent State University will host the Fall 1997 Wick Poetry Series, featuring poetry readings, workshops and conversations with Wick Scholarship recipients throughout the Fall Semester, on the Kent Campus.
Endowed in the memory of Stan and Tom Wick, and aiming to promote opportunities for emerging and established poets locally, regionally and nationally, the Wick Poetry program has supported annual scholarships to Kent since 1984.
The series is slated to commence on Thursday, Oct. 9 with "Celebrating Our Own: Wick Poetry Scholarship Winners." Beginning at 4 p.m. in Room 112A of Satterfield Hall, winners of the 1997 Stan and Tom Wick Scholarship Awards will read from their own work, promising an afternoon of diverse poetic voices.
Undergraduate scholarship winners scheduled to appear will be Mike Jones of Solon, Toni Miller of South Amherst and Angela Houck of Hillard, as well as honorable mention honorees Kathleen Karlis and Christian Smith, of Salem and Streetsboro, respectively. Also presenting their works will be high school winner Kelly Hiscott, from Euclid Senior High School in Euclid, and high school honorable mention honorees Camille Bocchicchio of Kent Roosevelt High School in Kent, and Lauren Brooke Worley of Peebles High School in Peebles.
On Tuesday, Oct. 21, renowned poets D. Nurske and Martha Rhodes will present "Special Collections and Archives" on the 12th Floor of the Kent library at 7:30 p.m. Nurske, author of poetry collections Shadow Wars, Isolation in Action and Voices Over Water, as well as Poet Laureate of Brooklyn, N.Y., will be appearing in tandem with Rhodes, author of At The Gate, as well as founder and current director of literary press Four Way Books and the creator of the CCS reading series in her native New York City.
The series will continue on Thursday, Nov. 15, as In The Arbor author and 1995 Wick Poetry Chapbook winner Nancy Kuhl visits Kent. Kuhl, a native of Columbus, will host "A Conversation With Nancy Kuhl" at 3 p.m. at the Women's Resource Center, and will participate in a reading of her poetry at 7:30 p.m. in Room 310 of the Kent Student Center. Kuhl's creative and critical work has appeared in such periodicals as Poetry Northwest, Spoon River Poetry Review and The International Journal Of American Studies. She is also a recent winner of the Associated Writing Program's Intro Award for Poetry.
The final event of the series will be an appearance by Mary E. Weems, an esteemed Ohio poet and performer on Wednesday, Dec. 3. Weems, a well-known performance-poet in the Cleveland area and author of such chapbooks as "Blackeyed" and the award-winning "White," will present a workshop in performance-poetry in the Mbari Mbayo Lecture Hall of Oscar Ritchie Hall at noon, and will host a reading of her poetry at 7:30 p.m. in Room 306 of the Student Center.
Weems is also well known for her performances at the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame and Museum and Lollapallooza in Columbus, and for her one-woman show "To Be Or Not To Be In The Nineties," which opened in Cleveland in September.
For further information on the Fall 1997 Wick Poetry Series, contact the Wick Poetry Program at (330) 672-2067, or Kent's English Department at (330) 672-2676. All events are free and open to the public.