INDIAN RIVER COUNTY — The Environmental Learning Center will host its second annual poetry reading on April 1 as part of National Poetry Month outside Laura Riding’s home at the campus. Poetry will focus on “Florida’s best,” including Sean Sexton, a local artist and poet.
The event will be held from 3 to 6 p.m. Tickets are $25 and can be purchased online at www.lauraridingjackson.com or by calling (772) 569-6718. The poetry reading will benefit the foundation’s literary and historic preservation programs.
The Environmental Learning Center is located at 255 Live Oak Drive, Wabasso.
Other featured poets include the following:
Peter Meinke – Esteemed writer and teacher at the University of Tampa’s MFA Program in Creative Writing, Peter Meinke has published seven books of poems in the prestigious Pitt Poetry Series, has directed the Writing Workshop at Eckerd College for several decades, was writer-in-residence at Hamilton College, Davidson College, the University of Hawaii, the University of North Carolina in Greensboro, and other schools. For Winter Term, 2010, he was “Distinguished Poet-in-Residence” at Converse College, Spartanburg SC. In 2009 he was appointed the first Poet Laureate of St. Petersburg, Florida, where he has lived with his wife, the artist Jeanne Clark, since 1966.
Lawrence Hetrick – Lawrence Hetrick hails from Gainesville, studied with Andrew Lytle, Smith Kirkpatrick, Robert Bryan, and John Goggin, and has has taught at the University of the South (Sewanee, Tennessee), Miami-Dade Community College, the University of Florida, and DeKalb College. He has published a variety of genres in journals and anthologies, including poetry, fiction, memoir, interviews, reviews of art and books, and historical scholarship. He also draws and paints regularly. He is currently Associate Professor of English at Georgia Perimeter College in Atlanta.
Carol Lynne Knight – Co-director of Anhinga Press, Carol Lynne Knight edits and designs books – more than 100 literary publications – and her poetry has appeared in Louisiana Literature, Tar River Review, Poetry Motel, Earth’s Daughters, The Ledge, Slipstream, Broome Review, Comstock Review, Northwest Florida Review, Epicenter, and many more. She is a winner of the Penumbra Poetry Prize, has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and is a fellow of the Hambidge Center for the Arts. She is the co-editor of Snakebird: Thirty Years of Anhinga Poets.