East Central University’s Sixth Annual September Poetry Series, featuring Janine Joseph and Brent Newsom, is set for Tuesday, Sept. 18, at 6:30 p.m. in the Raymond J. Estep Multimedia Center of the Bill S. Cole University Center.
The event is free and open to the public.
Janine Joseph
Joseph, born in the Philippines, is the author of “Driving without a License,” winner of the Kundiman Poetry Prize, 2018 da Vinci Eye Award and finalist for 2017 Oklahoma Book Award.
Her poems and essays have appeared in World Literature Today, The Poem’s Country: Place & Poetic Practice, Kenan Review Online, Best New Poets, Best American Experimental Writing, Zocalo Square, VIDA: Women in Literary Arts, the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-Day series.
A librettist, Joseph’s commission work for the Houston Grand Opera/HGOco include What Wings They Were: The Case of Emeline, “On the Muddy Water”: Voices from the Houston Ship Channel and From My Mother’s Mother.
Additionally, her poems have been set to music by acclaimed composers Melissa Dunphy, for the PhilHarmonai’s “American DREAMers: Stories of Immigration” concert and Reinaldo Moya, for the Schubert Club’s “DREAM Song” concert.
Joseph is an organizer for Undocupoets and serves on the Advisory Board for the Center for Poets & Writers in Tulsa and the National Advisory Board for Writers at Work. She lives in Stillwater, where she is an assistant professor of creative writing at Oklahoma State University.
Brent Newsom
Newsom’s debut poetry collection, “Love’s Labors,” was published in 2015 by CavanKerry Press and was a finalist for the Oklahoma Book Award.
His poems have also appeared in The Southern Review, PANK, Hopkins Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, Cave Wall and other journals. In addition, he wrote the libretto for an opera titled A Porcelain Doll, which premiered at Oklahoma Baptist University if March of 2017.
Newsom lives with his wife and two children in Shawnee, where he is an assistant professor of English at OBU.
The event is being sponsored by the ECU Department of English and Languages. For more information contact Dr. Ken Hada at 580-559-5557 or khada@ecok.edu.
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