Mount Saint Mary to present spring poetry series

NEWBURGH — Mount Saint Mary College will present its annual Spring Poetry Series, with presentations on Tuesday, April 17 with Jo Pitkin and on Thursday, April 19 with Suzanne Cleary, at 3:45 p.m. in Curtin Memorial Library. The public is welcome to these free readings. Pitkin’s poems have appeared in a number of literary magazines, including Ironwood and Quarterly West. Her poetry has won a Hudson Valley Poetry Contest award and a Mohonk Mountain Stage Company regional poetry award. A former editor at Houghton Mifflin, Pitkin works as freelance writer for educational publishers throughout the United States. The Cold Spring resident has an M.F.A. in poetry from the University of Iowa. Cleary has written three books of poetry, “Trick Pear,” “Keeping Time” and “Blue Cloth.” Her poems have appeared in both the Atlantic Monthly and Georgia Review. “Writing poetry helps me to think about my life and about the world, often about time, death, work and art, often about a given moment’s complexity or startling simplicity,” she observes about her craft. The Binghamton native is a professor of English at SUNY Rockland. She has a doctorate in literature and criticism from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. To learn more about the series, sponsored by the Division of Arts and Letters, call James F. Cotter, Ph.D. professor of English, at 569-3162. Visit the Mount at www.msmc.edu.