The 37th Spring Poetry Series continues on Tuesday with an online reading by poet and author Harley Elliott.
The reading, sponsored by Salina Arts & Humanities, is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m. Tuesday via Zoom web-based video conferencing. To sign up for the reading, visit Salina Arts & Humanities on Facebook, call the office at 785-309-5770, or visit the web page http://www.salinaarts.com/poetry_series.cfm. Viewers will be invited to ask the poet questions after the reading.
Elliott, a well-known Salina artist and writer, will read from two books published in 2020, The Mercy of Distance: New and Selected Poems and Creature Way, as well as from an earlier book, The Monkey of Mulberry Pass.
“Motivation is simply a matter of if something comes to you, you need to get it down, or it will nag at you,” Elliott says, about his writing process. “I don’t like to write poetry with a predetermined idea in my mind.”
A reading by poet and series founder Patricia Traxler will complete the series on April 27 via Zoom.
A lifelong student of the arts, Elliott received a B.A. from Kansas Wesleyan University in art and English, and an M.A. in painting from Highlands University in Las Vegas, N.M.
Early in his career, Elliott was as a book designer at Syracuse University Press and later went on to teach art as an assistant professor at Marymount College in Salina for 13 years. After his Marymount years, Elliott served as the education coordinator at the Salina Art Center for more than a decade.
Today, he is an established Kansas visual artist and the author of 11 poetry titles, a children’s book, The Tiger’s Spots, and a memoir, Loading the Stone.