The Spotlight Shines on Poet Ralph Black
Keuka College’s Spotlight Series will continue Thursday, April 25, with a reading by poet Ralph Black, associate professor of English at SUNY Brockport.
Free and open to the public, the reading begins at 7 p.m. in the Gannett Room of Lightner Library.
Black, who serves as co-director of the Brockport Writers Forum, received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Oregon and his master’s degree and doctorate from New York University.
His poems have appeared in Carolina Quarterly, Orion, Georgia Review, Gettysburg Review, Indiana Review, and Chelsea. A recipient of the Chelsea Poetry Award and the Academy of American Poets Prize, Black was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2002. He published a collection of poems, Turning over the Earth, in 2000 and received the Anne Halley Poetry Prize in 2008.
Black has read his poems as part of the University of Rochester’s Plutzik Reading Series, one of the country’s oldest and most prestigious literary reading programs. Established to honor the work of Hyam Plutzik, a distinguished poet and Deane Professor of Poetry and Rhetoric at the University, the series has featured more than 175 noted writers, including Pulitzer Prize recipients Anthony Hecht, Elizabeth Bishop, and Galway Kinnell.
Angela Glover in the Spotlight
Non-fiction author Angela Glover will read from her works Thursday, April 18, as part of Keuka College’s Spotlight Series.
Free and open to the public, the reading begins at 7 p.m. in the Gannett Room in the Lightner Library.
Glover is assistant professor of English at Midland University, where she also serves as director of the writing center and coordinates the creative writing and reading series. A graduate of the University of Nebraska, Glover earned her doctoral degree from the University of Kansas.
Her writing has appeared in The Mochilla Review, the Sequel, Heritage of the Great Plains, and Eureka Studies: Teaching Short Fiction. Her memoir, All Skate, Now Reverse, is about growing up in the Midwest.
“As a collective work, my memoir seeks to convey a greater truth about how family and place inform identity,” said Glover. “The 14 essays focus on the ordinary and attempt to illuminate it with connections and meanings that are morally complicated, and intentionally meant to tap into the reader’s own memories.”
In 2010, Glover was selected by the Willa Cather Foundation to be its writer-in-residence, where she led a series of prairie workshops. She lived in the Harling House, made famous in Cather’s My Antonia.
Glover is penning a collection of personal essays about growing up in a suburb during the ’70s. In these essays, she grapples with going green, living in a split level track home, and her fear of owls.
She lives in Nebraska with her husband and two dogs.
Spotlight Series to Feature Poet Michael Czarnecki, Musician Pat Kane
Poetry and music will share top billing when Keuka College’s Spotlight Series resumes Thursday, March 7.
Pat Kane
Poet and publisher Michael Czarnecki will read from his works while Pat Kane will showcase his musical versatility at 7 p.m. in the Gannett Room of Lightner Library. It is free and open to the public.
Czarnecki, who was featured in a Spotlight Series reading last year, is founder and editor of FootHills Publishing. He began his poetry career more than 45 years ago and has been influenced by Robert Frost, Gary Snyder, Robinson Jeffers, Lew Welch, T’ao Ch’ien, Basho, Ryokan, and Su Tung-P’o.
Czarnecki has given readings throughout the United States and has published several volumes of poetry including Acadia Cycle; Never Stop Asking for Poems – Selected Works; Twenty Days on Route 20; Sea Smoke and Sand Dollar, Simple Life, Simple Poems; Crisscross; and Zoo Haiku.
Kane’s instruments include fiddle, guitar, bodhran (a traditional Celtic frame drum), which he plays at jigs, reels (a traditional Scottish folk dance), and square dances. He also plays myriad ballads from Ireland and the United States.
Nicknamed the Balladeer of the Southern Tier, Kane has twice won first place for singing at the fleadh cheoil, an annual competition for traditional Irish musicians. He has recorded several CDs including West O’Clare Take One; West O’Clare Take Two; West O’Clare Four Track Mind; Somewhere West O’Clare; Live at Hogan’s; Between the Plough and the Stars; Once Upon a Pub; Old Time Squares; Home from Home; and Christmas on the Farm.
Phil Memmer in the Spotlight
Poet Phil Memmer, associate editor for Tiger Bark Press in Rochester, will read from his works Tuesday, Oct. 2, at Keuka College.
Part of the College’s Spotlight Series, the reading begins at 7 p.m. in the Gannett Room of Lightner Library. It is free and open to the public.
Memmer’s newest book of poems, The Storehouses of the Snow: Psalms, Parables and Dreams, was published by Lost Horse Press in February 2012. He is the author of three other books of poems, including Lucifer: A Hagiography, which was awarded the Idaho Prize from Lost Horse Press. His first two books of poems are Sweetheart, Baby, Darling, and Threat of Pleasure, which received the Adirondack Literary Award for Poetry.
He is also the author of three chapbooks of poems, including Greatest Hits, Apartment, and For Resident.
Memmer’s poems have appeared in such literary journals and anthologies as Poetry, Poetry Northwest, Poetry London, Southern Poetry Review, Mid-American Review, Epoch, Tar River Poetry, 180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Every Day, and Don’t Leave Hungry: 50 Years of Southern Poetry Review, among others.
His work has also appeared in Ted Kooser’s “American Life in Poetry” newspaper column, The Cortland Review, The Library of Congress’ Poetry 180, Verse Daily, And More Verse Daily, and Salt Hill.
Memmer served as a fellow at the Hawthornden Castle International Writers Retreat in Scotland and is director of the Arts Branch of the YMCA of Greater Syracuse, where he founded the Downtown Writer’s Center in 2001.
Poet, ’01 Graduate in Spotlight
Poet and author Austin MacRae, a 2001 Keuka College graduate, will return to his alma mater Tuesday, Sept. 18, to read from his works.
Part of the College’s Spotlight Series, the reading begins at 7 p.m. in the Gannett Room of Lightner Library. It is free and open to the public.
MacRae’s most recent work, The Organ Builder, was recently published by Dos Madres Press in Loveland, Ohio. Professor of English Bob Darling says the anthology “provides further proof that Austin MacRae is one of the finest poets of his generation, and his work is accessible and challenging. The Organ Builder is both a fruition of a love affair with language and a promise of work to come.”
Poet Bruce Bennett, professor of English and director of creative writing at Wells College, says MacRae’s “dedication to craft of all sorts is evident in The Organ Builder, but so too is dedication to thought, close observation, and having something important to say about our shared humanity. Austin MacRae has written an impressive book.”
Born and raised in Cortland, MacRae still lives in the city, and earned his master’s degree from SUNY Cortland. He serves as an adjunct instructor of English at Tompkins Cortland Community College, and as literary editor of Free Inquiry magazine.
His poetry has appeared in numerous journals, including Atlanta Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, 32 Poems, The Cortland Review, Rattle, Stone Canoe, Unsplendid, Measure, The Formalist, and Red Jacket, Keuka College’s literary magazine, among others. He is the author of two chapbook collections, The Second Rose and Graceways, and three other anthologies: Mowing, Guns ‘n Roses, and Margin.
MacRae was a finalist for the Morton Marr Poetry Prize and a Pushcart Prize nominee. His poems are included in such anthologies as Villanelles, The Best of the Barefoot Muse, and Sonnets: 150 Contemporary Sonnets.
The Bard: A Reader’s Digest Version
By Amanda Harrison ’12
Shakespearean actor and author Tim Mooney will bring his one-man show Lot ’o Shakespeare to Keuka College Wednesday, April 25.
The next offering in the Spotlight Series, the show begins at 7:30 p.m. in the Red Barn Theater and is free and open to the public.
Mooney will perform a single monologue from each Shakespeare play, with the order determined by chance.
Lot ’o Shakespeare “takes highbrow art and mixes it with lowbrow fun,” said Matthew J. Palm of the Orlando Sentinel. “Mooney is an engaging presence and can switch from indignation in Comedy of Errors, to earnest in a love sonnet, to comical Malvolio in Twelfth Night. He may not be as physically imposing as some actors to play Henry V, but his St. Crispen’s Day speech made me want to take up arms with him.”
Chaim Eliyahu of KCStage.com called Lot o’ Shakespeare “a tour de force comprising no fewer than 19 Shakespeare scenes and sonnets. Mooney’s interpretations were outstanding, and not infrequently cast new light on obscure corners of Shakespeare’s work.”
Mooney has also garnered rave reviews for Moliere Than Thou, another one-man show. He is the author of an acting textbook titled Acting at the Speed of Life; Conquering Theatrical Style.
Spotlight Shines on Poet Jay Rogoff
Poet Jay Rogoff, a lecturer with Skidmore College’s English department, will read from his poetry Tuesday, April 3 at Keuka College.
The next offering in Keuka’s Spotlight Series, the reading is free and open to the public and begins at 7 p.m. in the Gannett Room of Lightner Library.
Rogoff’s most recent book, The Code of Terpsichore, a series of poems concerning dance, was published last year. Other poetry collections include The Long Fault, The Art of Gravity, How We Came to Stand on That Shore, and The Cutoff, which earned the Washington Prize for Poetry. Rogoff received a 2010 Spring Garden Press’s Robert Watson Poetry Award for his manuscript Twenty Danses Macabre, and was awarded a letterpress chapbook of the collection. In 2010, he received the Pushcart Prize.
Rogoff’s work appears in several journals and magazines, including Agni, Literary Imagination, Ploughshares, Poetry London, Salmagundi, and The Southern Review, among others. He frequently publishes criticism and reviews in such places as The Georgia Review, Salmagundi, and The Southern Review. An essay about his poetics in relation to Emily Dickinson’s appeared in the fall 2008 Emily Dickinson Journal.
A frequent guest at Yaddo—an artists’ community in Saratoga Springs—he has recently completed a book-length poetic sequence on Paris in 1870, the Franco-Prussian War, and the siege of Paris as viewed through the artistic ferment of the period, especially the ballet Coppélia.
In addition to crafting poetry, Rogoff reviews the New York City Ballet’s annual summer season for The Saratogian, and writes dance criticism for The Hopkins Review, Ballet Review, and The Saratogian.
Spotlight on Michael Czarnecki
Poet and publisher Michael Czarnecki will read from his works Wednesday, March 14 as part of the College’s Spotlight Series.
Free and open to the public, the reading begins at 7 p.m. in the Gannett Room in the Lightner Library.
Czarnecki, founder and editor of FootHills Publishing, began his poetry career nearly 45 years ago. In 1985, he gave his first public reading of a poem he had written about the Vietnam War.
Influenced by such poets as Robert Frost, Gary Snyder, Robinson Jeffers, Lew Welch, T’ao Ch’ien, Basho, Ryokan, and Su Tung-P’o, Czarnecki has given readings throughout the United States.
Czarnecki has read from his poetry at Wells College, University of Wisconsin Baraboo, North Hennepin Community College, Treasure Valley Community College, Wilkes University, Finger Lakes Community College, Kutztown University, St. John Fisher College, Rochester Institute of Technology, Oklahoma City Community College, Western Nebraska Community College, Reading Area Community College, DeSales University, Penn State Berks, SUNY Binghamton, Elmira College, and SUNY Brockport.
In conjunction with readings, Czarnecki has facilitated numerous writing workshops for writers of all ages and has served as a poet-in-residence in elementary, middle and high schools in numerous states around the country.
Czarnecki has published several volumes of poetry including Acadia Cycle; Never Stop Asking for Poems – Selected Works; Twenty Days on Route 20; Sea Smoke and Sand Dollar, Simple Life, Simple Poems; Crisscross; and Zoo Haiku.
Spotlight on Emily Bobo
Keuka College’s Spotlight Series will continue Tuesday, Sept. 6 with a reading by poet Emily Bobo.
Free and open to the public, the reading begins at 7 p.m. in the Corning Room of Dahlstrom Student Center.
Bobo serves as associate professor of English and communication at Ivy Tech Community College in Bloomington, Ind., where she teaches poetry and creative writing.
She is the author of Fugue, a poetry chapbook about the breakup between a recovering musician and her piano, which appears in the third volume of the emerging poets’ series New Poets, Short Books.
Bobo holds a master’s degree from Wichita State University and a Ph.D. from the University of Kansas. She has served on the faculties of several universities, and has published more than 20 creative works in various national literary journals. She has performed her work in New York, Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, and New Mexico.
Spotlight on Charles Martin
Keuka College’s Spotlight Series will continue Thursday, May 5 with a reading by poet Charles Martin.
Free and open to the public, the reading begins at 7 p.m. in the Gannett Room of Lightner Library.
Martin teaches poetry at Syracuse University and Queensborough Community College (CUNY). A graduate of Fordham University, Martin received his doctorate from SUNY Buffalo.
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