By
Vanessa Francis
Arizona Daily Wildcat
The UA Poetry Center is exploring different styles and reading venues as it prepares to kick off another season.
Readings this year - which marks the 40th anniversary of the Center's founding - will vary from the public presentations of a poet's work to a spoken poetry hip-hop event in October.
The Center's staff is looking forward to the varied events it has prepared for the public's enjoyment.
"I am thrilled about the different aesthetics and the uses of spoken word ... and showing all the different arms of poetry," said Center events coordinator Frances Shoberg.
In addition to varying the types of readings being held this semester, the Center is incorporating new venues into its schedule.
The Rialto Theater will host October's hip-hop event, while St. Philip's in the Hills - a local church - will be the venue for the November reading by former Poet Laureate Robert Hass.
"We are holding some of them at these locations to pull in more members of the community," said Shoberg.
The first poets scheduled to read this year are C.D. Wright and Barbara Cully, who will be appearing in September.
"Carolyn (Wright) is a poet who incorporates a mysterious mixing of themes and has a dream-like quality to her work," said Poetry Center director Jim Paul.
Wright grew up in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas, which Paul said is reflected in her work.
"Her work definitely has a voice tone of the South," he said.
Wright has published nine collections of poetry - most recently 1998's "Deepstone Come Shining." Last year, she received the Lannan Literary Award and was also awarded a Poetry Center Book Award from San Francisco State University for her previous collection, "String." She currently teaches at Brown University in Rhode Island.
Wright's work discusses frank personal issues like girlfriends and "radical shifts from personal to more thoughtful matter," Paul said.
Cully is a local poet and also a lecturer at the University of Arizona. Her first collection of poetry, "The New Intimacy," was awarded the National Poetry Series Open Competition. She has recently completed a new collection of poems called "Desire Racing."
"She is a poet with an intimate voice and capable of range," said Paul.
All scheduled readings are followed by a colloquium which consists mostly of an informal question and answer session with audience members and the poet. Readings are free and open to the public.
The reading are held at 8 p.m. in the Modern Languages auditorium, unless otherwise noted. Wright will appear Sept. 13 with Cully to follow on Sept. 27.
