April Gallery Open Poetry Reading hosted by Maj Ragain

Greetings!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

CONTACT

Standing Rock Cultural Arts
257 N Water St
Kent OH 44240
330.673.4970
info@standingrock.net for inquiries
www.standingrock.net for updates
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WHO: Standing Rock Cultural Arts and Maj Ragain present...

WHAT: April Gallery Open Poetry Reading hosted by Maj Ragain
-Read in the round (no list, no mics)

WHEN: Fri, Apr 15, 2010
-starts 8 PM
-come and leave quietly whenever you wish while it's going or during the usual break (time varies)

WHERE: North Water Street Gallery, 257 N Water St, Kent OH

REMAINING DATES FOR THIS SEASON:

Fri-Sun, May 6-8: Annual Jawbone Poetry with Maj Ragain
-Readings will go on hiatus following Jawbone until Fall 2011

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 hosts the monthly gallery Open Poetry Readings during the school year at The North Water Street Gallery.

Dr. Major D. Ragain, a Professor 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, 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 has 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. We always welcome donors and sponsors. We now also have reasonably-priced memberships to our Organization. Donations and memberships are tax deductible.

Thank you for supporting the Arts!

For information: http://www.standingrock.net/
Contact: info@standingrock.net
Phone: 330-673-4970