By Cole Hatcher
You’re invited to join Ohio Wesleyan University for an April shower of creative writing events with two poetry readings and an examination of Shakespeare’s “Pericles.”
The free events are sponsored by the Department of English with the Department of Environment & Sustainability collaborating on a reading by nature poet Todd Davis, Ph.D., a professor of English and Environmental Science at Pennsylvania State University’s Altoona College.
Davis will kick off the creativity, speaking at 4:15 p.m. April 2 in the Milligan Room inside Slocum Hall, 75 S. Sandusky St., Delaware. He is the author of eight full-length poetry collections, including “Ditch Memory: New & Selected Poems,” “Coffin Honey,” “Native Species,” and “Winterkill.”
More than 400 of Davis’s poems have appeared in outlets including American Poetry Review, Iowa Review, Ecotone, North American Review, Indiana Review, and Alaska Quarterly Review and have been anthologized in The Autumn House Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry and in Bedford/St. Martin’s textbook, “Approaching Literature.”
Davis’s work has won the Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Prize, the Chautauqua Editor’s Prize, the Midwest Book Award, the ForeWord INDIES Book of the Year Bronze and Silver Awards, and the Bloomsburg University Book Prize. After the reading, he will answer questions and participate in a book signing. His presentation is the university’s 2024-2025 David G. Osborne Lecture, created in memory of the former professor of English and Humanities-Classics. Learn more about Davis and his work at www.todddavispoet.com.
Next up, poets Aza Pace and Julia Kolchinsky will read their poetry and have a conversation at 4:15 p.m. April 8 in the Milligan Room. Pace, Ph.D., is a visiting assistant professor of English at Ohio Wesleyan, and Kolchinsky, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of English and Creative Writing at Denison University.
Pace will read from “Her Terrible Splendor,” a collection of poems that “transports the Greek witch-goddess Circe from her mythical island of Aeaea to modern-day East Texas,” where Pace was raised. Her book won the 2024 Emma Howell Rising Poet Prize.
Kolchinsky will read from “Parallax,” a collection of linked lyric poems about parenting her neurodiverse child under the shadow of the war in Ukraine, her birthplace. Her book was a finalist for the Miller Williams Prize. The poets will answer questions and sign books after their talk. Learn more at www.azapace.com and www.juliakolchinsky.com.
Concluding the month of special events, Zackariah Long, Ph.D., Ohio Wesleyan’s Ben T. Spencer Associate Professor of English, will present “The Fruit of Yon Celestial Tree: Trauma, Mythology, and Typology in Shakespeare’s ‘Pericles.'”
Long, who also serves as chair of the English Department, will speak at 4:15 p.m. April 16 in Room 312 of the R.W. Corns Building, 78 S. Sandusky St., Delaware.
Long specializes in the literature and culture of the English Renaissance, especially Shakespeare. His research interests include memory studies, trauma theory, and the early modern ideas about the mind-body. A question-and-answer session will follow his reading. Long’s presentation is Ohio Wesleyan’s Benjamin T. Spencer Lecture.
For more information, visit owu.edu/English or owu.edu/environment.
Source: OWU; Photo by Mark Schmitter ’12
