Labor Omnia Vincit

Oklahoma Laborfest sounds like it's going to be great!

The festival takes place in Oklahoma City's

Plaza District

from

August 26th to August 28th.

It will begin with a poetry reading at Coffy's Cafe, hosted by Jeanetta Calhoun Mish, whose book, Work is Love Made Visible: Poetry and Family Photographs, won the 2010 Oklahoma Book Award for Poetry.



Several Oklahoma writers will read, including our own Aaron Rudolph, Jason Poudrier and more. Lawton will be represented! Let us know if you are going, too.

Here's a link to a map of the Plaza District.

Here's the schedule of events for the rest of the weekend, including panel discussions, screenings of documentaries, live music and art shows!

The festival will wrap up with "Labor Speaks," an event that "will include dramatic readings of selected historical texts from Oklahoma’s labor and civil rights movement as well as musical performances of songs connected to these movements."

This is a great opportunity to support the arts and to learn about Oklahoma history.

Re-Verse Recap (March 11, 2010)

The first annual Re-Verse is completed. I use the word "annual" because we're definitely doing this again. It was too much fun to let it fade away into the Lawton fog. We had about 25 people show up and Amber Harrington, Sigma Tau Delta's president, said it was the best attended event STD has hosted all year.

I wish I didn't ramble on so much at the beginning with introductions, but no one ran away screaming. Anyway, we had both faculty and students read. Next year, we hope to increase our presenters to 30, with people participating from both Cameron and the Lawton/Southwerstern OK community.

Highlights... Drs. John Morris, William Carney, Ginette Baillergeon, and Vivian Tomlinson all gave us great poems performed passionately. Dr. Baillergeon, in particular, wowed us with two poems, one in French. She recited a longer poem by Carl Sandburg and reminded us that not all Sanburg poems are four lines long. Both of her poems were long ones and I don't think she faltered once.

Several students read, both English majors and students from other disciplines. All together, eleven people read a poem each and not one person had a difficult time reciting their work. Not one. I've been to recitation events before, and I've never seen one without a few long pauses. Long pauses are perfectly fine in such a difficult situation, but the fact that there was not one at our event is very impressive.

Also, we contributed lots of food to the Lawton Food Bank. This was Amber's idea and it is a good one. Future events only mean further donations. We are considering a fall date for next year's even (maybe a bi-annual thing) simply because we don't want to wait twelve months to do this again.