ALLIANCE, Ohio — The University of Mount Union’s English Society and Department of English are pleased to announce a reading and presentation by Ohio Poet Laureate Dave Lucas on Wednesday, April 24 at 3:30 p.m. in Presser Recital Hall on Mount Union’s campus.

As an award-winning poet and arts advocate, Lucas has been promoting the role of writing and literature in the lives of all people for years. His innovative and successful writer’s series “Brews and Prose” has been bringing local, national and international writers to Cleveland since 2012 and as a poet and scholar he emphasizes the importance of “blurring the lines that separate—and too often isolate—studies in creative writing and literature.” 

Named as Ohio’s second Poet Laureate by Governor Kasich in January 2018 Lucas believes that we all love poetry, even if we do not know it.

“If you know by heart the lyrics to your favorite song, you already love one kind of poetry,” Lucas said. “You love another whenever you laugh at a joke or groan over a bad pun. The jargon of your profession and the slang you speak with friends are poetry. So are the metaphors we use to describe this world we are all trying to understand.” 

A lifelong Clevelander, Lucas’s first book of poetry, “Weather,” received the 2012 Ohioana Book Award for Poetry. His poems are anthologized in The Bedford Introduction to Literature and Best New Poets of 2005. He has received the Cleveland Arts Prize for Emerging Artist in Literature and is a Reva and David Logan Foundation, For Your Gift grant award winner.

He earned a Bachelor of Arts in English from John Carroll University, a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from the University of Virginia and a Master of Arts and Ph.D. in English language and literature from the University of Michigan. He has been an instructor at Case Western Reserve University, the Cleveland Clinic Program in Medical Humanities, Lerner College of Medicine and the John Carroll Young Writers Workshop. 

This Mount Union event is in celebration of National Poetry Month is open and free to the public. Presser Recital Hall is located in Cope Music Hall on the corner of S. Union Ave. and Simpson St. in Alliance.

For more information, visit mountunion.edu/events/english-society-presents-ohio-poet-laureate-dave-lucas or contact Frank Tascone, assistant professor of English, at tasconf@mountunion.edu.