The
Hudson Valley Writers' Centerpresents a reading with
Michael Burkard
and Jianqing Zheng
Join us as we celebrate and hear from the ninth winner of the Slapering Hol Press annual poetry contest, Jianqing Zheng. Zheng’s manuscript, The Landscape of Mind, was selected by the judge of the contest, Michael Burkard, who will also read for us.
Michael
Burkard,
from Rome, NY, is the author of nine books of poetry, the most recent
being Unsleeping and Pennsylvania Collection Agency (both
2001). His poetry - daring, dangerous, darkly intense - has won him a
Whiting Writers' Award, the Poetry Society of America's Alice Fay di Castagnola
Award, and grants from the New York State Foundation for the Arts and
the National Endowment for the Arts. Besides teaching at a number of colleges
and universities, most recently in the MFA Fine Writing Program at Syracuse
University, Burkard has worked as an alcoholism counselor, particularly
with children impacted by alcoholism.
Jianqing
Zheng was born in Wuhan, China, where he lived for 33 years.
Following his graduation from Wuhan Foreign Language School, he was dispatched
to a communal farm for "re-education." After attending college in Wuhan,
he began teaching there in 1982. He now teaches at Mississippi Valley
State University and is a translator for Red Moon Press. His poems have
been published in many magazines, and he is also the winner of the 1994
Georgetown Review Poetry Contest. Burkard describes Zheng's poems as "quick
movements of light and touch and tone ... lives and images rub up against
each other and leave their marks." Suggested Donation: $5 ($3 for members)
The readings at the HVWC are made possible in part by grants from the Bydale Foundation and the Gannett Foundation; with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts; and by Westchester Arts Council with funds from Westchester County Government, corporations and individuals.