Come Home to English, Homecoming 2017
A Department of English Celebration of ASU Homecoming
COME HOME TO ENGLISH EVENTS, OCTOBER 25-28, 2017
All events are free of charge, open to the public, and take place at the ASU campus in Tempe.
For more information, please contact Kristen.LaRue@asu.edu.
'Making Signs that Sing' Talk by Heather Maring + Homecoming Writing Awards
Wed., Oct. 25 @ 3:30-5 p.m. | Ross-Blakley Hall (RBHL) 117 | ASU, Tempe campus
Medievalist and poet Heather Maring, an Assistant Professor in the Department of English, gives a talk on the craft and process of writing. Following Maring’s presentation, winners of English's Homecoming Writing Awards will be announced and will read from their work.
How do writers use words on the page to speak to and with their audiences? In her book, Signs that Sing: Hybrid Poetics in Old English Verse (2017), Maring describes how early medieval poets combined aspects of their oral traditions, liturgies, and written traditions to make poems densely wrought with meaning. In her talk, she will link her research on these early poems to her process of writing both academic prose and creative poems.
Maring's other specialties are poetry, poetics, and oral traditions. Her poems have appeared in The Southeast Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and other journals. She also served as a contributing editor on UNESCO's project to create a Manual on Oral Traditions and Expressions. She was awarded a Faculty Fellowship by the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies in 2010.
Stellar Alumni Reading Series: Irena Praitis and Bojan Louis
Thurs., Oct. 26 @ 7-8:30 p.m. | Memorial Union (MU) Cochise Room (228) | ASU, Tempe campus
ASU's Creative Writing Program presents its brightest, most talented alumni writers in this new series. In this installment, Irena Praitis (MFA 1999; PhD 2001) and Bojan Louis (MFA 2009) read from their work. A reception and book signing will follow.
Based on eye-witness accounts, Irena Praitis's The Last Stone in the Circle chronicles experiences of prisoners in a WWII German work re-education camp. Delving into the murkiness of human experience in the face of suffering, the poems consider the complicated choices people make in impossibly difficult circumstances and explore the sheer resilience of survival.
Currents, by Diné writer Bojan Louis, encompasses the kinetic dissonance of the contemporary struggle to coexist with self-inflicted eroding environments.
Block Party: May the Fork be with You!
Sat., Oct. 28 @ 3:45 p.m. | Cady Mall, outside Language and Literature (LL) | ASU, Tempe campus
Part of the annual university-wide celebration, the Come Home to English booth features giant, interactive crossword and word search puzzles designed by Regents' Professor and Arizona Poet Laureate Alberto Ríos. Prizes for correct answers! In 2017 our booth and puzzles are themed "Star-Lit," celebrating intergalactic travel in literature. Kids ages 3-12 can pick up a free book and kids of all ages can converse with Department of English students, faculty, and staff.
Image at top: Hubble Space Telescope view of LH 95 star-forming region of the Large Magellanic Cloud. Credit: European Space Agency via Wikimedia Commons.