Poetry

April 3, 2014 Visitations by John Bensko, a professor of English at the University of Memphis, has been awarded the Anita Claire Scharf Award from the University of Tampa Press. Bensko will read from the newly released collection at the Jackson Madison County Library on April 3, 2014, at noon. The event is free and open to the public.

February 28, 2014 R.B. Morris is a Knoxville poet, songwriter, solo performer, band leader, and a sometimes-playwright and actor. He has published books of poetry and music albums, and he wrote and acted in The Man Who Lives Here Is Loony, a one-man play taken from the life and work of writer James Agee. He was inducted into the East Tennessee Writers Hall of Fame in 2009. R.B. Morris will read from The Mockingbird Poems at the John C. Hodges Library Auditorium on the University of Tennessee campus in Knoxville on March 3, 2014, at 7 p.m. The reading is free and open to the public.

February 13, 2014 Jeff Daniel Marion, a native of Rogersville, taught English and creative writing at Carson-Newman University for over thirty-five years. He has published nine poetry collections, four chapbooks, and a children’s book, Hello, Crow. On February 13, 2014, at 7:30 p.m., Marion will give a free public reading at the Paul Meek Library on the campus of the University of Tennessee in Martin.

January 31, 2014 Gary L. McDowell is the author of Weeping at a Stranger’s Funeral (Dream Horse Press, 2014), American Amen (Dream Horse Press, 2010), and They Speak of Fruit (Cooper Dillon Books, 2009), and he is the co-editor of The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Prose Poetry (Rose Metal Press, 2010). His poems and lyric essays are forthcoming in The Nation, Prairie Schooner, Quarter After Eight, and others. McDowell lives in Antioch, Tennessee, and is an assistant professor of English at Belmont University in Nashville. On January 31, 2014, at 7 p.m. he will appear—along with poets TJ Jarrett and Jeff Hardin—at Barnes & Noble Vanderbilt in Nashville. The event, part of the Lyrical Brew reading series, is free and open to the public.