The Cleveland State University Poetry Center is hosting the reading this Tuesday April 4th at 7:30 in Student Center 313/315 on the CSU campus. Smith is the author of new CSUPC book I Live in a Hut and the founder of OH NO magazine. Harvey was the judge who selected Smith's book for the CSUPC 2011 First Book Prize. She is the author of three poetry collections, most recently Modern Life (Graywolf, 2007). As well as being a contributing editor to jubilat, Meatpaper and BOMB, she teaches poetry at Sarah Lawrence University.
Matthea Harvey is also the author of The Little General and the Giant Snowflake (Tin House Books, 2009), illustrated by Elizabeth Zechel. Just yesterday, this book caught my eye. I'm interning at the CSUPC, and we've been so busy processing manuscripts and mailing out books, but I was startled by this children's book that was ordered to have at the upcoming reading. It's very strange and very intelligent. The book playfully explores the conflict between realism and imagination employing lemmings and various kinds of snowflakes.
S.E. Smith's I Live in a Hut also uses play to cut to the core. The words prance and strike. The cover illustration is itself a poem - a mysterious round void overwhelms yellow woods, giving the impression that while you are looking into your life and smiling, something something something is standing just in front of you, waiting to gobble you up. She writes of "Vertical Lakes" and "Enormous Sleeping Women" who reappear in the book as mountains and move.
This event is free and open to the public. For more information, email csupc.mgr@gmail.com.
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