Community Corner

Ferndale Library to Host Poetry Reading

Event on April 16 will feature four Michigan poets.

A poetry reading featuring four Michigan poets will be held from 7-9 p.m. Tuesday, April 16 at the Ferndale Public Library.

The event, hosted by E. Susan Sheiner and sponsored by Springfed Arts, will include poetry readings from Mary Jo Firth Gillett, Dennis Hinrichsen, Christine Rhein and D'Anne Witkowski.

The event is free and open to the public. Refreshments and book signings will also be featured.

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About the poets

Mary Jo Firth Gillett is a 2012 Kresge Artist Fellow for her poetry. She earned a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry from Vermont College. She has worked as a spot welder, lactation consultant, and high school teacher. She was the Advanced Poetry Workshop instructor for Springfed Arts for 11 years. Gillett's collection, Soluble Fish, won the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award. Her three award-winning chapbooks are Chandeliers of Fish, Tiger in a Hairnet, and Not One. Her poems have appeared in The Harvard Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Southern Review, Gettysburg Review, Third Coast and Green Mountains Review. A fourth chapbook, Dance Like a Flame has won the Hill-Stead Sunken Gardens Poetry Award and is forthcoming.

Dennis Hinrichsen is the author of seven books of poetry. His most recent is Rip-tooth, winner of the 2010 Tampa Poetry Prize, and Kurosawa's Dog, winner of the 2008 FIELD Poetry Prize. Hinrichsen has an MFA in writing from the University of Iowa and has been the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship as well as two grants from the state of Michigan. His poems have appeared in American Literary Review, Black Warrior Review, and Passages North. Hinrichsen's poems have been featured on the Poetry Daily and The Academy of American Poets websites. He lives and teaches in Lansing, Michigan.

Find out what's happening in Ferndalewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Christine Rhein is the author of Wild Flight, winner of the Walt McDonald Poetry Prize (Texas Tech University Press, 2008). Her poems have appeared widely in literary journals, including The Gettysburg Review, The Southern Review, and Michigan Quarterly Review, and have been selected for Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, The Writer’s Almanac, and Best New Poets. Samples of her work can be found at www.ChristineRhein.com. A former auto engineer, Rhein lives in Brighton, Michigan.

D'Anne Witkowski is a writer, teacher, and mother living in Ferndale with her wife and son. She received her MFA from the University of Michigan in 2008 and works there as a lecturer in the English Department Writing Program. Her biggest accomplishment as a human is her three-year-old son, specifically the fact that he knows all the words to "Hot Blooded" by Foreigner, though she  swears that when he is old enough she will explain to him that someone with a fever of 103 is definitely not make-out material and the only person who should check it and see is a doctor.

For more information about the event, call the library at 248-546-2504.

Source: Ferndale Public Library.


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