03/16/11

Story by Peggy Graham

Poet Laureate speaks at JCCC

OVERLAND PARK, Kan. — Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, the Poet Laureate of Kansas 2009-2011, will speak at 4 p.m. Saturday, April 16, in the Hudson Auditorium of the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art at Johnson County Community College. Finding Our Way Home To Ourselves and This Land: A Reading of Poetry and Prose with Kansas Poet Laureate Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg is the title of her presentation. A reception follows in the Atrium of the Regnier Center. The event is free and open to the public.

Mirriam-Goldberg received her PhD in English and master’s degree in creative writing, both from the University of Kansas, and a bachelor’s degree in history, University of Missouri. As founder of Transformative Language Arts at Goddard College, she values social and personal transformation through the spoken, written and sung word. She is the author of 10 books including her most recent Landed (poetry, Mammoth Publications), The Sky Begins At Your Feet (a memoir on cancer, community and ecology, Ice Cube Press) and the award-winning Write Where You Are. She is editor of The Power of Words: A Transformative Language Arts Reader, and her poetry and prose have been published in more than 50 literary journals and anthologies.

Her project as poet laureate is Poetry Across Kansas— Reading and Writing Our Way Home, intended to strengthen the presence of poetry in Kansas, build literary communities statewide and enhance Kansans' sense of place through poetry.

Mirriam-Goldberg’s presentation is a capstone to an all-day Kansas Writers Symposium, sponsored by JCCC’s Kansas Studies Institute and English department. The goal is to facilitate a gathering of writers from diverse disciplines whose work centers on Kansas as a “place.” Invited writers include historians, fiction writers, poets, essayists and scientists.

For more information, contact James Leiker, director, KSI, 913-469-8500, ext. 3673, or Thomas Reynolds, associate professor, English, 913-469-8500, ext. 3935.

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