The 25th Annual Timrod Author Series continues with a Poetry Café at 2 p.m. April 28 at the Timrod Library. The event will feature several South Carolina poets reading from their latest works, followed by a café-themed reception. During the reception, each poet will be available to answer questions and will also offer their newest publications and artwork for sale.
Tickets are $25 ($20 for Timrod Library members). Call or stop by the Timrod Library today to buy tickets!
Featured poets include Pee Dee region poet laureate Jo Angela Edwins, Summerville poet and artist Camille Soltani Icely, and James Island poet laureate Eugene Platt.
Jo Angela Edwins has published poems in over 100 journals and anthologies, including Calyx, New South, The Hollins Critic, and LEON Literary Review. She is the author of the collections A Dangerous Heaven and Play. She has received awards from Winning Writers, Poetry Super Highway, the Jasper Project, and the South Carolina Academy of Authors and is a Pushcart Prize, Forward Prize, Best of the Net, and Bettering American Poetry nominee. She lives in Florence, SC, where she serves as the inaugural poet laureate of the Pee Dee region and teaches at Francis Marion University.
Camille Soltani Icely, who creates art and poetry as Sarah Camille, is a native Summervillian poet and artist who spends her days as a full-time mother, painting in her home studio and at the Public Works Art Center at the CC Artist Cooperative. Her artwork is displayed in several local businesses, and she often participates in local poetry events. Her new book, The Journey Within, is a collection of both her artwork and poetry. She describes these as her own personal psalms and says the power of faith and love is a huge component of her work. She and her husband, Shanen, and two-year-old son, Jonah, make their home in Summerville.
Eugene Platt is the Poet Laureate of the Town of James Island. His poems have appeared in many literary publications and in a new collection of his work titled Weaned on War. An Army veteran, Platt is a graduate of both the University of South Carolina and Trinity College Dublin, where he studied Anglo-Irish Literature. He has given more than 100 public readings of his work and was invited to read in the inaugural Dublin Arts Festival in 1970. He previously served as poet-in-residence for public radio station WSCI. He lives in Charleston with his main muses, his wife, Judith, corgi Bess, and cats Finnegan and Maeve.