"Seat in the Shade" features a week of poetry in Athens

Continuing tonight through Thursday, June 13, "Seat in the Shade" will feature Georgia poets reading upstairs at The Globe, Athens, GA, beginning at 7 pm. "A Seat in the Shade" is hosted by University of Georgia College of Education professor Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor. Last week's readings featured presentations by Judith Ortiz Cofer, Stephen Corey and Jenny Gropp Hess 

Cahnmann-Taylor, a professor in the department of language and literacy education and founder of Poetry by and for Educators, developed the summer poetry reading series a year ago in conjunction with her Advanced Poetry for Educators graduate class. 

This is the second year for the event titled, “Seat in the Shade: A Summer Poetry Reading Series,” and will feature poets Laura Newbern, Jericho Brown, Rebecca Baggett and Tamara Madison each night beginning at 7 p.m. The finale on Thursday, June 13 titled, “Poetry by and for Educators: Readings from the Collective,” will feature poetry by UGA educators and students. 

Last week's nightly readings featured presentations by Judith Ortiz Cofer, and Stephen Corey and Jenny Gropp Hess from The Georgia Review. Here is an overview of poets reading through Thursday. The Globe is located at 199 N. Lumpkin St., Athens.

Monday, June 10: Laura Newbern
Laura Newbern is the author of Love and the Eye, selected by Claudia Rankine for the Kore Press First Book Award. She is also the recipient of a Writers Award from the Rona Jaffe Foundation. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, The Atlantic, Black Warrior Review, and elsewhere. She teaches at Georgia College and serves as the Poetry Editor of Arts & Letters.

Tuesday, June 11: Jericho Brown
Jericho Brown currently teaches creative writing as an assistant professor of English at the University of San Diego.  His first collection of poetry, Please, won the 2009 American Book Award. Brown is the recipient of the 2009-10 Bunting Fellowship from the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University and a Whiting Writer's Award. He was a finalist for the 2009 Lambda Literary Award and Paterson Poetry Prize and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He has also received two travel fellowships to the Krakow Poetry Seminar in Poland.

Wednesday, June 12: Tamara Madison
Tamara J. Madison is a writer, poet and performer currently living in Atlanta. Her creative and critical works have been published in numerous anthologies and journals including: Poetry International, Tidal Basin Review, aaduna, and Web Del Sol Review of Books. She is an M.F.A. graduate of New England College and has taught at Fairleigh Dickinson University and Hudson County Community College in New Jersey.

Thursday, June 13: Poetry by and for Educators,  Readings from the Collective
A night of readings from UGA educators and poets led by Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor.