The Michigan State University Center for Poetry in the Residential College in the Arts and Humanities launches its third year of programming with an exciting and diverse fall series of readings.

The readings, to be held at 7 p.m. on Oct. 21, Oct. 28, Nov. 4, and Nov. 11, will feature writers and musicians in the RCAH Theater, located in Snyder-Phillips Hall at MSU.  All events are free and open to the public, and light refreshments will be provided.

• Oct. 21, Iraqi Poets: Dunya Mikhail and Haider Al-Kabi are Iraqi poets who contributed to Flowers of Flame: Unheard Voices of Iraq (MSU Press 2008).  Mikhail’s works include the poetry collection The War Works Hard, which won PEN's translation awarded and was named one of the best books of 2005 by the New York Public Library. Al-Kabi is author of a poetry collection, Bombardment.

• Oct. 28, Michael and Carrie Kline: Michael and Carrie Kline are musicians and folklorists who have been studying and chronicling the history and culture of Appalachia for 30 years. The Klines are the 1999 winners of the Media Arts Fellowship Award from the West Virginia Division of Culture & History.  They join the Center for Poetry in October for a concert of Appalachian folk music.

• Nov. 4, Carolyn Smart: Carolyn Smart’s previous collections of poetry have been Swimmers in Oblivion (York Publishing, 1981), Power Sources (Fiddlehead Poetry Books, 1982), Stoning the Moon (Oberon Press, 1986) and The Way to Come Home (Brick Books, 1993). A section of her memoir At the End of the Day won first prize in the CBC Radio Literary Contest. Her long poem "The Sound of the Birds" was runner-up for the National Magazine Award in 1993.

• Nov. 11, Thomas Lynch: Thomas Lynch is an essayist, poet and funeral director of Lynch & Sons funeral home in Milford. He is regularly featured on the op-ed page of The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Times of London, as well as in Harper's Magazine.  His collection of essays, The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade, won the Heartland Prize for non-fiction, and the American Book Award.  A second collection of essays, Bodies in Motion and at Rest, won the Great Lakes Book Award.  Lynch is the author of three collections of poetry, including Still Life in Milford.

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