Caldwell College Students Organize Local Poetry Readings

For the third semester in a row, students enrolled in Dr. Mary Ann Miller's Intro to Poetry course were given the opportunity to volunteer for service to local, published poets. These service-learning opportunities gave the students hands-on experience in organizing, publicizing, and hosting poetry readings. They also learned more about the poetry itself by meeting with the poets prior to the events to discuss their work and choose appropriate poems for reading to an audience.

On February 28, 2009, students Robert Arena, Bryan Broderick, Steven DeAngelis, and Kevoi Walters hosted a reading at the Caldwell Public Library. Guest poet Diane Lockward read from her second collection What Feeds Us (Wind Publications), which received the 2006 Quentin R. Howard Poetry Prize. Her poems have appeared in Garrison Keillor's Good Poems for Hard Times and in such journals as Harvard Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, and Prairie Schooner.

Students Pukar Ghimire and Ameah Adjobi volunteered to help Loren Kleinman in a poetry reading at Tasty CoCo on March 26, 2009. Kleinman is a poet, travel editor, and Assistant Director of the Academic Support Center at Berkeley College in NJ. She is the recipient of the 2003 Spire Press Poetry Prize for her first collection Flamenco Sketches and is a 2000 and 2003 Pushcart Prize Nominee.

The third service-learning opportunity took place at Tasty CoCo on March 28, 2009. Rick Mullin, poet, journalist, and painter, read from his new book-length narrative poem Huncke, to be published in 2010. Assisting him were Caldwell College students Gabriel Fuentes, Rebecca Smith, Kristina Cox, Kathleen Valentinetti, and Dennis Maharjan.