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Arts & Entertainment

Annual Jawbone Poetry Festival with Maj Ragain

Greetings!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

CONTACT

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Standing Rock Cultural Arts
257 N Water St
Kent OH 44240
330.673.4970
info@standingrock.net for inquiries
www.standingrock.net for updates
Also www.facebook.com/SRCAKent and www.twitter.com/Kent_SRCA

The Poet Party of the Year!

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"For over a quarter of a century, poets have gathered in Kent, Ohio, for a weekend-long spring word fest, a series of open poetry readings, volunteer, self sanctioned, welcoming travelers, local folk, expatriates to this common ground. No mike. No list. The Jawbone open. Well come."

Greetings,

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

WHO: Standing Rock Cultural Arts and Maj Ragain present

WHAT: Jawbone Poetry Festival
-open poetry with Maj Ragain

WHERE:
-North Water Street Gallery, 257 N. Water St. Downtown Kent
-Tannery Park, Summit St by the river
-See scheduled days/times below

WHEN: Full Schedule For Jawbone Poetry.
-FRI, MAY 6, 8 PM - North Water Street Gallery
-SAT, MAY 7, 11 AM-2PM - Pie & Poetry, N Water St Gallery
-SAT, MAY 7, 2 PM - Tannery Park, Summit Street
-SAT, MAY 7, 8 PM - North Water Street Gallery
-SUN, MAY 8, 2 PM - Poetry Potluck in Yard next to gallery

Thanks to Maj Ragain, the Kent State University poetry professor who continues to be a creative driving force in our community! The gallery will be hosting the annual Jawbone Reading on Friday, May 6th, 8pm, Saturday, May 7th, 8pm, and Sunday, May 8th, 2pm as well as the Poetry & Pie Festival on Saturday, May 7th, 11 AM-2PM. Hope you can make it!

ABOUT MAJ RAGAIN

Maj Ragain, one of the premiere poetic writers of our fair city of Kent and professor of English and writing at Kent State University, will host the many wondrous voices of people from all over the country this week-end at The 24th Annual Jawbone Poetry Reading.

He is a Creative Writing Professor at Kent State University and hosts monthly Poetry Readings during the school year at The North Water Street Gallery.

Dr. Major D. Ragain, an instructor of English at Kent State since 1981, teaches courses such as Creative Writing (introductory and advanced poetry writing workshops), Survey of American Literature 1800 to Present and Survey of American Literature, and Introduction to Poetry, among others. He previously taught in Illinois at Frontier College, Olney Community College and Southern Illinois University and in North Carolina at Winston-Salem State College. He earned his Ph.D. at Kent State in 1990, his master’s at the University of Illinois in 1963 and his bachelor’s from Eastern Illinois University in 1962. Today, Ragain is a successful poet with both written and audio publications.

Ragain received much praise from his peers and students. One student wrote, “Maj is active in the local and regional poetry scene, and his genuine love of the use of language is unprecedented. The energy of genuine love and respect between poet, faculty and students was a once in a lifetime thrill I am honored to have witnessed.” Another student said, “Maj is a selfless professor, and KSU is indeed fortunate to have the dedicated Major Ragain on faculty. I have seen Maj’s positive impact upon students; their self-esteem rockets with astonishing work by semester’s end. He draws the very best out of each and every student. I have the deepest respect for this man.”

One of Ragain’s colleagues said, “A devotion to poetry and its unique power to heal, to unite people around a single purpose, and to create the fire of creative energy in groups of people is characteristic of all of Maj Ragain’s work as writer, teacher and reader. … His classroom is rigorous in its demand that students push the work beyond where they thought they could go with it. He makes innovative assignments, requires a lot of writing and reading of poems, and teaches, by precept and example, the ways in which a life can be grounded in the life of the imagination. …I learn from Maj Ragain every day, and I carry his gifts to my own students and into my own poems.”

In Ragain’s teaching statement he said, “Before I ever taught a class, I came across this sentence in Louis Sullivan’s Kindergarten Chats, a singular book about organic principles in architecture and the forms in which spirit resides. I can still see my hand writing it down in an old notebook, ‘To teach is to touch the heart and impel it to action.’ In 33 years of teaching, that has remained a guiding principle. …I believe that, as a teacher, I am also an apprentice, a learner and in the poet Gary Snyder’s wonderful phrase, ‘a fellow worker in the Buddha fields.’ I often write with my students. Of all the ‘strategies,’ that seems the most fruitful. It brings certitude to the classroom a sense that the teaching is being translated into action, that the work is shared. I am teaching myself to listen."

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Standing Rock Cultural Arts is a 501(c)(3) organization. Thank you to our current sponsors and members! Donations and memberships are always tax deductible and great appreciated.

Thank you for supporting the Arts!

www.standingrock.net
info@standingrock.net
330.673.4970

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