Kent State University’s Wick Poetry Center
will host Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Yusef
Komunyakaa on Thursday, March 29, in
Ritchie Hall.

Kent State University’s Wick Poetry Center will host Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa on Thursday, March 29, at 7:30 p.m. in Room 214 of Ritchie Hall on the Kent Campus. Kent State University Libraries and the Department of Pan-African Studies will co-sponsor the event. This reading is free and open to the public

Komunyakaa is the author of numerous books of poems, including The Chameleon Couch, Warhorses, Taboo and Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems, for which he received the Pulitzer Prize. Komunyakaa is the recipient of many awards and prizes, including a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and the William Faulkner Prize. He served as a chancellor for the Academy of American Poets from 1999 to 2005, and is currently professor and distinguished senior poet at New York University.

The Kent State University and Kent communities can also attend another event earlier in the week featuring Komunyakaa’s work. He will discuss his poetry on Sunday, March 25, from 2 to 3:30 p.m. at the Kent Free Library. Mwatabu Okantah, assistant professor and poet-in-residence in the Department of Pan-African Studies and director of the Center of Pan-African Culture at Kent State, will lead the discussion. Packets of Komunyakaa's selected works will be available in advance.

Advanced registration is recommended. Contact the library at 330-673-4414 or email kflinfo@kentfreelibrary.org.

More information about the center’s readings is available at www.kent.edu/wick or by calling the Wick Poetry Center at 330-672-2067.