English Department Events, Spring 2005

G.S. Giscombe and Ed Roberson Poetry Reading (9 March)
Emily Hooper Lansana & Glenda Zahra Baker (14 March)
Wosene Kosrof Lecture (21 March)
Stephanie Strickland Lecture (23 March)
City Wide Poetry Reading (7 April)
Suzanne Buffam Book Release Event (13 April)
Robin Becker Poetry Reading (20 April)
Kevin Stein Poetry Reading (28 April)
Columbia Poetry Review Publication Reading (19 May)
Art Showcase (25 May)
Elaine Equi, Mary Jo Bang, & Connie Deanovich Poetry Reading (26 May)

G.S. Giscombe and Ed Roberson Poetry Reading
Wednesday, 9 March, 5:30 p.m.
Columbia College Concert Hall
1014 South Michigan Avenue

Ed Roberson' s books include Voices Cast Out to Talk Us In (winner of the Iowa Poetry Prize), Just 1W Word of Navigational Challenges: New and Selected Work (Talisman House Press), and Atmosphere Conditions (National Poetry Series winner, Sun & Moon Press). He has also received a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writer's Award.

C.S. Giscombe is the author of Here (Dalkey Archive Press) and Giscome Road (Dalkey Archive), and a prose book entitled Into and Out of Dislocation (North Point Press). His current projects include Prairie Style, a collection of poems about the Midwest, and Traveling Public, a prose work about trains. He teaches in the MFA program at Penn State.

Emily Hooper Lansana & Glenda Zahra Baker
African Storyteller & Vocalist
Monday, 14 March, 2:00-4:00 p.m.
Hokin Hall
623 S. Wabash

Wosene Kosrof Lecture
Ethiopian Painter
Monday, 21 March, 2:00-4:00 p.m.
Hokin Hall
623 S. Wabash

Stephanie Strickland Lecture: "Sand Language: Literary Hypermedia"
Visiting Poet
Wednesday, 23 March, 5:30 p.m.
Columbia College Concert Hall
1014 South Michigan Avenue

Stephanie Strickland is a print and new media poet. Her fourth book of poems, V:WaveSon.nets/Losing L 'una (Penguin), has a web component, http://vniverse.com. Her prize-winning works include True North, The Red Virgin: A Poem of Simone Weil, and The Ballad of Sand and Harry Soot. In this lecture, Strickland will illustrate on the Web how new media and network technologies are changing the way we read, write and define text, as they complicate notions of time, place, identity, and word.

City Wide Poetry Reading
Thursday, 7 April, 5:30 p.m.
Columbia College Concert Hall
1014 South Michigan Avenue

The Columbia College Chicago Citywide Undergraduate Poetry Festival brings together 11 poets from Chicago-area colleges and universities to read their work. This year's schools include Columbia College Chicago, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago State University, DePaul University, Loyola University, National-Louis University, Northeastern Illinois University, Northwestern University, Roosevelt University, University of Illinois-Chicago, and University of Chicago. A reception follows the reading. The reading is free and open to the public. For more information, call (312) 344-8138.

Suzanne Buffam Book Release Event
Wednesday, 13 April, 5:30 p.m.
C33 Space
33 East Congress

Robin Becker Poetry Reading
Wednesday, 20 April, 5:30 p.m.
Hokin Hall, Room 109
623 S. Wabash

Robin Becker is the award-winning author of five collections of poems, including The Horse Fair, All-American Girl, and Giacometti 's Dog, all from University of Pittsburgh Press. Her poems and book reviews appear widely in such journals as The American Poetry Review, New Letters, Ploughshares, Poetry, and Prairie Schooner. She is currently professor of English and Women's Studies at Pennsylvania State University.

Kevin Stein Poetry Reading
Thursday, 28 April, 6:00 p.m.
Columbia College Concert Hall
1014 South Michigan Avenue

Illinois Poet Laureate Kevin Stein is the author of nine books of poetry and literary criticism. Notable among these are the forthcoming American Ghost Roses, as well as the collections Chance Ransom and Bruised Paradise, all published by University of Illinois Press. Along with poet G. E. Murray, he edited illinois Voices (University of Illinois), the definitive anthology of twentieth-century Illinois poetry. He is Caterpillar Professor of English at Bradley University.

Columbia Poetry Review Publication Reading
Thursday, 19 May, 5:30 p.m.
Collins Hall: Room 602
624 South Michigan

Contributors to this year's Columbia Poetry Review, now in its 18th year as the English Department's student-edited, nationally distributed poetry magazine, will read their work. The winners of the 2005 Eileen Lannan Poetry Prize, sponsored by the Academy of American Poets, will also be announced.

English Department Art Showcase: "Pieces of You"
Wednesday, 25 May, 4:00-7:00 p.m.
Writing Center: 1st Floor
33 East Congress

See our Art Showcase web page for more information.

Elaine Equi, Mary Jo Bang, & Connie Deanovich Poetry Reading
Alumnae Reading
Thursday, 26 May, 5:30 p.m.
Collins Hall: Room 602
624 South Michigan

Mary Jo Bang is the author of four books of poetry, the most recent of which is The Eye Like a Strange Balloon (Grove Press). She has been the recipient of numerous awards, including a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton and a grant from the Guggenheim Foundation. She is on the permanent faculty of Washington University in St. Louis.

Connie Deanovich is the author of Zombie Jet (Zoland Books) and Watusi Titanic (Timken). A recipient of a Whiting Writer's Award and a GE Award for Younger Writers, Deanovich is a Chicagoan who now makes her home in Madison, Wisconsin.

Elaine Equi is the author of The Cloud of Knowable Things from Coffee House Press. She has also published many other collections of poetry, including Surface Tension, Decoy, and Voice-Over, which won the San Francisco State Poetry Award. She lives in New York, where she teaches in The New School's MFA program and in the graduate department at City College.

All readings are free and open to the public. Call (312) 344-8100 or 312-344-8101 for more information.