By JACLYN BURKE
Student Reporter
Every fall semester Northwestern Oklahoma State University welcomes a guest speaker to present the Annual Cultural Heritage Lecture. This year’s lecture will be presented by Dr. Benjamin Myers, Crouch-Mathis professor of literature at Oklahoma Baptist University and Oklahoma’s current poet laureate.
He will be the first visiting writer of this school year. Although the visitors haven’t been chosen yet, there will be more in town this coming spring. His presentation will be slightly different from the typical ones that are part of the Visiting Writer’s Series. Typically, the visiting writers do a reading, book signing and visit classes. However, Meyers will give a lecture one day and present his poetry the next.
His talk, “Reticence and Expansiveness: Oklahoma and its Poetry,” will provide discussion on the history of poetry within the state and will be presented on Monday, Sept. 21, at 7 p.m. in the Ranger Room on Northwestern’s Alva campus.
The following evening, Tuesday, Sept. 22, Myers will give a reading of his work at the Graceful Arts Gallery and Studios in downtown Alva. His reading will begin at 7 p.m.
Myers’ visit coincides with the recent publication of “The Oklahoma Poets Laureates: A Sourcebook, History, and Anthology” written by Shawn Holliday, associate dean of graduate studies and professor of English.
“It is our honor to bring Myers to Northwestern to present the Cultural Heritage Lecture,” Holliday said. “Northwestern is becoming known for its relationship with the state’s poets laureate, which began with Nathan Brown’s visit to campus two years ago. This is an on-going relationship that the university will continue to foster.”
According to okbu.edu, Myers resides in central Oklahoma and is a Literature and English professor at Oklahoma Baptist University. He has written two books: “Lapse Americana” and “Elegy for Trains.” He won the Oklahoma Book Award for Poetry in 2011. His poems can be read in various places, from the New York Quarterly to The Iron Horse Literacy Review. Myers received his bachelor’s from University of the Ozarks and his master’s and doctorate degrees from Washington University.
Meyers is firm believer in not being ashamed of where you came from. He shows great pride for central Oklahoma in his writings. He is also haunted by his father’s death of cancer, so that is a common theme that appears in his poems. Many characters in his poems feel as though the American Dream has disappeared, so his writings include this theme as well.
Tthe best thing is that his poetry is approachable, so it is easy to understand,” said Holliday.
The Annual Cultural Heritage Lecture Series is sponsored by the Social Sciences Department and the Northwestern Institute for Citizenship Studies, the Master of Arts in American Studies program, and the English, Foreign Language and Humanities Department.
Chair of the English, Foreign Language and Humanities Department, Kathryn Lane says, “Myers is intelligent, so his lecture will be interesting and will tell us things we don’t already know.”
For more information concerning Myer’s lecture and poetry reading, contact Holliday at (580) 327-8589 or at spholliday@nwosu.edu.