Instructor reads work from latest book
College of Eastern Utah English instructor Pat Dyjak joined Mesa State College instructor Carol Christ for a poetry reading March 8. The two published poets read for 30 minutes each to an audience at Templeton Studios in Spring Glen. “It was an energizing reading, full of power and honesty,” said Nancy Takacs, who attended the reading.
College of Eastern Utah English instructor Pat Dyjak joined Mesa State College instructor Carol Christ for a poetry reading March 8. The two published poets read for 30 minutes each to an audience at Templeton Studios in Spring Glen. “It was an energizing reading, full of power and honesty,” said Nancy Takacs, who attended the reading.
Dyjak read from her new book The Autobiography of Some Other Woman. Her work has been published in numerous magazines and she has also won several awards for her poetry. “We celebrated as well the publication of Pat’s first book published by the poetry collective: Outlaw Artists Press,” said Takacs, CEU English instructor.
Next on Dyjak’s schedule is to read her poetry at the Popular Culture Association and American Culture Association (PCA/ACA) National Conference March 19-22, 2008 in San Francisco, Calif.
She said, “The panels look fabulous – many will feed right into my literature of diversity course and my literary theory course.” While in California, she plans to meet other poets at the conference, with an eye towards expanding her connections in the poetry world and for finding poets and writers to include in my literature course (and potentially my creative writing course in spring 2009), and for finding poets and writers to visit CEU’s campus.
“This conference has been historically important in cultural studies, in particular, feminist and gender studies, which led the diversity movement in the 1970s. It is at this conference that a diversity of American literatures were first considered by scholars,” she said.
“In addition to covering gender topics, the panel presentations I plan to attend include many diversity areas, including Chicano/Chicana literature, African American literature, border literature, queer studies, masculinities, and other areas germane to my literature and diversity course here at CEU.
“Outlaw Artists: a publishing collective produced my first chapbook ‘Autobiography of Some Other Woman’ which I will take with me to the conference,” she said.
“The CEU library wants two copies of my chapbook, so folks can see it/read it there.” Retired CEU instructor Jan Minich and Nancy Takacs also have chapbooks from Outlaw Artists; Nancy Takacs founded the collective, she said.
