Centre News

Centre College will host a Winter Poetry Festival at 4 p.m. on
Saturday Jan. 21 in the Ewen Meeting Room of the Campus
Center. Poets reading at the festival include (clockwise from top
left) Kathy Knuckles Barbour, Julia Johnson, NEH Associate
Professor of English Lisa Williams, Katerina Stoyklova-Klemer,
Adam Day and Associate Professor of English Philip White.

Centre College will host a Winter Poetry Festival at 4 p.m. on Saturday Jan. 21 in the Ewen Meeting Room of the Campus Center. The event is free and open to the public.

“This is the first year of what I hope will be an annual Winter Poetry Festival, with different writers featured every winter,” says Lisa Williams, NEH associate professor of English and creative writing, who will be reading selections of her own poetry at the festival. “I encourage all who are interested to attend and show their support — so we can do this every year!”

Associate Professor of English Philip White will also read selections at the festival, along with Kathy Knuckles Barbour, Adam Day, Julia Johnson and Katerina Stoyklova-Klemer. The six poets will showcase a variety of unique voices.

“Each of these poets is so different in style and subject, and they are all distinctive poetic voices — as well as wonderful readers,” Williams says.

Kathy Knuckles Barbour, a Kentucky native, teaches American literature and creative writing at Hanover College. Her poetry has been published in “Raritan,” “Atlanta Review,” “Southeast Review” and “Heartland Review.”

Adam Day, also a Kentucky native, has been poetry editor for “Washington Square,” the literary journal of New York University — where he received his MFA. His work has been published or is forthcoming in “American Poetry Review,” “Crab Orchard Review” and the “Seattle Review.”

Julia Johnson is the author of two collections of poetry, “Naming the Afternoon” and the forthcoming “The Falling Horse.” She received the Fellowship of Southern Writers’ New Writing Award. She currently teaches English at the University of Kentucky.

Katerina Stoyklova-Klemer has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net Award and AWP Intro Award. She has published “The Air Around the Butterfly,” a book of poetry, and “The Most,” a chapbook currently in pre-order. She serves as Deputy Editor-in-Chief for the international multimedia journal, Public Republic.

“Variety is one particular pleasure of this event: how these five poets use language, and what they speak to in their poems, make them all so different from one another,” Williams says.

“I'm looking forward to hearing poems spoken by their authors — taking pleasure in the words and rhythms, but also in how each person expresses their poetry, through the tones, inflections, pauses and little gestures of speech,” Williams continues. “There's actually nothing I enjoy more than sitting back and listening to a poetry reading that I know will be a good one. I hope people will just soak it up, and enjoy.”

Have comments, suggestions, or story ideas? E-mail elizabeth.trollinger@centre.edu with your feedback.

Centre College, founded in 1819 and chosen to host its second Vice Presidential Debate in 2012, is ranked among the U.S. News top 50 national liberal arts colleges, at 42nd in the nation, and ranks 27th for best value among national liberal arts colleges. Forbes magazine ranks Centre 34th among all the nation’s colleges and universities and has named Centre in the top five among all institutions of higher education in the South for three years in a row. Centre is also ranked fourth in the nation by U.S. News for its study abroad program. For more, click here.