National Poetry Month brings poets Deborah Ager and Alison Stine

Editor's Note: Don Brenner is a student intern for the Visiting Writer's Series.

April is national poetry month. What better way to celebrate than to have two great poets visit Fredonia? Poets Deborah Ager and Alison Stine will read their poems on Thursday, April 15.

Ager is the author of Midnight Voices, which was a semifinalist for the A Poulin Jr. poetry prize and was published in 2009. Ager writes intense poems about places familiar to her, like Iowa, Gainesville and San Francisco; she has the ability to place readers in the spots that are close to her heart. Dale Young, author of The Second Person, says, “What rises from these poems is the voice of the magician, a voice able to disarm in its hushed and dangerous whispers, a voice that surprises not only the mind but the imagination.”

Stine is the author of Ohio Violence, the winner of the 2008 Vasser Miller Prize in poetry. She is like Ager in that she writes about familiar places, specifically Ohio but has her own unique voice guided by images of animals, landscape and even Graceland. Ander Monson, author of Neck Deep and Other Predicaments, says about the book, “What loveliness there is (and there’s a fount of that) comes through constellations of blood, beauty, animaldeath, girldeath, the dark pines, bisected toys, the remains of deer: everything connecting and electric.”

The reading will begin at 7 p.m. on April 15 in McEwen 202. Both poets will read, followed by a answer session. There will also be books for sale and a book signing by both Ager and Stine after the event. After the reading and question and answer session, there will be a raffle, sponsored by The Upper Crust Bakery and The Book Nook. A pie or some sort of delicious dessert will be raffled off, along with gift certificates to The Book Nook.

These will be the last two visiting writers of the semester. If you feel like getting a leg up before the reading, both Midnight Voices and Ohio Violence can be purchased at the bookstore.