A Special Evening of Haiku Poetry With Fred Andrle and Jennifer Hambrick!

Join popular poet and former WOSU personality and award-winning poet, writer, radio producer, and WOSU 101’s classical midday host for a special joint reading that explores the fascinating world of haiku in English. Fred will read from his latest work relaxing in the bliss of self-acceptance, a collection of haiku, senryu, and small poems. Jennifer will read from her latest book, a silence or two, acclaimed as “a stunning collection destined to become a haiku classic.”

This is a free event but registration is required. The collections of both writers will be available for purchase at the event.

OHIO POETRY ASSOCIATION and WOSU PUBLIC MEDIA are Gramercy’s Community Partners for this National Poetry Month Special Program.

Reading from their new haiku collections, Fred and Jennifer will traverse the astonishing stylistic range of contemporary haiku in English, from traditional season-inspired poems to explorative haiku at the intersection of Japanese and English-language avant-garde poetry. These small poems informed by the Japanese haiku tradition delight and inspire in just a few short lines and capture the beauty, grace, and power of moments living and imagined in sparkling language. The poets might stretch their legs with a few longer poems, as well. This program may build one’s understanding of what haiku are – and what these small but mighty poems can do.

Fred Andrle is a poet and journalist. His lively small-form poems weave a fabric of everyday life, its brightness and its angst, and always with a thoughtful, deep regard for human experience. Along with his current collection, relaxing in the bliss of self-acceptance, he is the author of the haiku poetry collection rocking in the cradle of the moment. His haiku have been published in several journals, including Modern Haiku, Presence, Frogpond, and World Haiku Review. Fred is also the author of the poetry collections, Every Instant Offering Grace, What Counts, and Love Life. Fred has received playwriting and poetry fellowships from the Greater Columbus Arts Council. He is a co-chair of Hospital Poets and a member of the House of Toast, a Columbus poetry writing and performance group. Fred was host and executive producer of WOSU radio’s Open Line for more than twenty years, until his retirement in 2009.

Jennifer Hambrick is an award-winning poet, writer, radio producer and WOSU 101’s classical midday host. Hailed for her “brilliant” imagery, “masterful” craftsmanship, and “uniquely musical voice,” Jennifer Hambrick is a seven-time Pushcart Prize nominee and a poet of unusual range. Along with a silence or two, she is the author of the collections In the High Weeds, winner of the 2020 Stevens Prize from the National Federation of State Poetry Societies; Joyride, winner of the Marianne Bluger Book Award; and Unscathed. Hambrick was featured by U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser in American Life in Poetry, among other appearances, and hundreds of her poems are published in Rattle, The Columbia Review, The American Journal of Poetry, Maryland Literary Review, Santa Clara Review, The Main Street Rag, POEM, Modern Haiku, and in dozens of other literary journals and invited anthologies in the U.S. and abroad.

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