JOANNE DIAZ read several poems about her life’s journey at last weekend’s Drake Writers’ Harvest Festival to raise money for the Food Bank of Iowa. Photo: Ann Schnoeblen
The second annual Drake Writers’ Harvest Festival Nov. 6 raised money for the Food Bank of Iowa. The Writers and Critics Series event included a silent auction sponsored by Sigma Tau Delta, an English honors organization just approved by Student Senate last week.
Books, gift certificates to area businesses, photographs and handmade arm warmers were some of the items auctioned off. Guests were also encouraged to donate money or non-perishable food items.
2009 Periphery Award winners senior Brandon Courtney and graduate Julie Van Dike read selections of their work. Van Dike also read second-place finisher senior Brigitte Haugen’s piece. Courtney had won first place with his poem, “Trazodone and Lodestone,” and Van Dike was awarded third place for “Spike Punch.”
The students were joined by nationally recognized poet Joanne Diaz, an assistant professor of English at Illinois Wesleyan University. Diaz served as a juror for the Periphery Awards last year, and read several of her own poems.
Sigma Tau Delta President junior Karissa Morton said the event was a good way for her organization to jump into campus life after its reactivation this year.
“This is the first year we’ve been involved with it, and it’s turning out to be a lot of fun,” she said. “It’s something we think is really going to help out both the Writers and Critics program and Sigma Tau Delta, along with the Food Bank of Iowa.”
Several campus groups helped with the event, said Jennifer Perrine, the faculty advisor for Sigma Tau Delta and assistant professor of English at Drake.
“I really like that it’s bringing together different kinds of organizations and the students are getting more involved,” Perrine said.
Participants said they were unsure if they would get a good turnout.
“It’s really hit or miss with the Writers and Critics,” Courtney said. “But, I think that the lineup that we have deserves the attention that it’s going to get with Joanne Diaz.”
Before several of her poems, Diaz explained her research and what inspired her to write.
Sophomore Jessica Kinkade, who is in an English class taught by Perrine, said she was glad that she had attended the event.
Kinkade said her favorite poem was Diaz’s “On My Father’s Loss Of Hearing.” Before reading it, Diaz said that she had tried to capture her father’s deafness not as a disability, but as a gift.
“Being hearing-impaired myself, I was hanging on her words from the second she said that, because no one looks at it that way,” Kinkade said. “For her to, through her writing, try and put herself in her father’s shoes and see things from his perspective was just amazing to me. That inspired me as a writer to really try and accomplish and explore different ideas and new concepts through my writing.”
After the reading concluded, Kinkade even got to talk to Diaz about her work.
“She would be a great professor to have,” she said. “She was giving me writing pointers and she is as genuine as her poetry comes off.”
Kinkade said she prefers hearing poems read aloud by authors rather than reading them in a book.
“You can hear and sense the emotion in that poem, even if it’s unintended, and that says and shows a lot about the journeys taken by the poet to write the poem they’re reading,” Kinkade said.
