JMU - Poetry Conference
Poetry Conference - 2011
Poetry in Perspective: Seeing is Believing
1st Inaugural Poetry Day Conference
March 21, 2011
College of Education
“Poetry Day” is a series of workshops for area middle and high school students to explore innovative ways for reading, writing and performing poetry.
The conference was a collaboration among the faculty and graduate students in the College of Education, Furious Flower Poetry Center, the Department of English, James Madison Libraries, James Madison Student Association of Teachers of English (JMSATE), and students and English faculty from Harrisonburg High School. The program consisted of an opening welcome by Hood Frazier from the Department of Middle, Secondary and Mathematics Education, a keynote speech by the author and director of The Furious Flower Poetry Center, Joanne Gabbin, and words of wisdom by Jonathan Paulo from the JMU Library. Twenty students from Harrisonburg High School under the instruction of Jen Rose and Cathy Soenksen attended the event. Two sessions of writing workshops were led by Kalela Williams, Assistant Director of The Furious Flower and Susan Facknitz from the Department of English. Students wrote Ekphrastic poems about student art from Deborah Carrington’s 4th Annual Youth Area Art Exhibition on display in the College of Education. Assisting students in their writing were members of JMSATE and the Poetry Hit Squad, a group of JMU undergraduate and graduate students devoted to innovative methods of exploring poetry writing. (Kayla Runion, Amanda Kirk, Nikki Madures, Leah Metheny, Jenny Knight and Mai Khanh]. The conference concluded with a student, faculty and staff reading and reception in the Memorial Hall Auditorium, sponsored by The Furious Flower Poetry Center and College of Education.
