Miscellany

On the 15th of April, students met in downtown Greenville at the Tipsy Teapot coffee shop to raise awareness and funds for Haiti at EGSO's last creative reading of the year. The reading was originally scheduled to take place soon after the Haitian earthquake tragedy in January, but unexpected ice and snow forced organizers to postpone the event to a later date. The evening began with a short video from Doctors Without Borders, an international medical humanitarian organization created by doctors and journalists from France in 1971, now focused to rebuild the lives of those who have suffered after the devastating earthquake of January 2010.  Nathan Black read first from a collection of his own poetry. "Ray and Rook Blues" was an original poem about the oppression faced by those who play Dungeons & Dragons in a technologically modern world. Images of reality weave in and out of the poem as its central character is knighted by Morgan le Fay one moment, and then made to conquer the dishes from dinner the next. Celestine Davis [pictured here] read "Home is" about the feelings of change one encounters when they come back home from grad school.  Jennifer Sheppard read "A Love Letter for Haiti" by Nellie Lambert. LaTasha Jones read an especially emotional poem of her own called "The Day After," and Matt Finch finished the night with "Icy Weekend," a "lunch poem" about having to overstay his welcome at a friend's house after the Greenville ice storm of this year. The last poem read during the evening was composed on the spot by everyone in attendance: the title "Compositions of Conscience" scribbled across the top. During the readings, the paper was passed around the audience and each person in attendance wrote a few lines of their own. The end result was a funny, yet serious, clever, yet jumbled union of thought. All in all the evening was an exciting way to raise money and eyebrows. Was it worth it, you ask? "Yeah, yeah it was."

Dean Marshall Tuck and Bob Siegel performed original music at Caffe Driade in Chapel Hill on May 28. The event was attended by ECU grad alumni Brennan Adcock, Elizabeth Howland, Will Cyrus, and Arrie Brown. Siegel and Tuck's next performance will be at Tipsy Teapot on June 24th in Greenville.

Roger Schlobin served as a consultant for Bedford/St. Martin's and evaluated the new edition of Diane Hacker's A Pocket Style Manual.

Five Outstanding Creative Writers from ECU's class of 2010 were honored at a reading and reception on May 5 at 7:30 pm in Bate 1031. Deniz Alemdar read a piece titled "Chiaroscuro," heavily influenced by the meaning of its title, an Italian word literally meaning "lightdark." Stephen Mason read five pieces of original flash fiction about characters "on the verge of things," and they all addressed the difficulty of communication. Mason admitted, "I think we all struggle to communicate, even with the people we're closest with, and with our generation being inundated with even less personal forms of communication, I think it becomes only more difficult when we come face to face." His story "Look at Our Hands" is reprinted here. Kathryn Jackson read an excerpt from an untitled piece of nonfiction about attending a friend's funeral. Thomas Mock read from a collection of his own poetry, calling them "formal poems that were written informally."  Dawn Allison read a very emotional story called "The Boxer" inspired by watching the popular fighting show "Ultimate Fighter" on television one night. [Pictured from left to right are: Mason, Mock, Jackson, Alemdar, and Allison.]