Poetry Reading and Workshops with Patricia Spears Jones and Diane Wakoski - December 2

The Distinguished Poets Series of the Poetry Center at PCCC presents a reading by Patricia Spears Jones and Diane Wakoski on Saturday, December 2 at 1 pm.

An open reading follows the featured poets. This free event will take place at the historic Hamilton Club Building, 32 Church St. in Paterson.

Poetry workshops, conducted by Jones and Wakoski, are 10 a.m. to noon on December 2 at the same location - pre-registration is required and a workshop fee $20 - contact Smita at sdesai@pccc.edu or (973) 684-6555. Visit www.poetrycenterpccc.com for more information on this and future workshops and readings.

Parking is available at the PCCC lot on College Blvd., between Memorial Dr. and Church St.

Patricia Spears Jones is a Brooklyn-based African American poet and author of A Lucent Fire: New and Selected Poems (White Pine Press) and seven other collections and chapbooks.

She is the 2017 Jackson Poetry Prize winner, a 2016 Pushcart Prize winner, and a recipient of a Barbara Deming Fund award. Her work is included in major anthologies, and two plays commissioned by Mabou Mines, the famed experimental theater company, were produced in New York City.

Patricia is an emeritus fellow for the Black Earth Institute, and has read and led workshops at Poets House, St. Mark’s Poetry Project, and Naropa University.



Diane Wakoski is the author of over 60 published collections of poetry and prose, including Emerald Ice: Selected Poems 1962-1987 (Black Sparrow Press, 1988), winner of the 1989 William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America, which collects poems from her first 16 poetry collections. Her most recent book of poetry is Bay of Angels (Anhinga Press, 2013).

Her honors include: a Fulbright fellowship, a Michigan Arts Foundation award, and grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Michigan Arts Council, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York State Council on the Arts.

Now retired, Wakoski was Poet in Residence and University Distinguished Professor at Michigan State University 1975-2012.