CLC Welcomes Poet Brenda Hillman for “Verse Like Water” Series

Verse Like Water, the visiting poet program of Central Lakes College in Brainerd, kicked off its 11th year of programming Wednesday with a visit and poetry reading from Brenda Hillman.

Over those 11 years, CLC English professor Jeff Johnson has invited over 30 different poets who have received National Book Awards and Pulitzer Prizes, and who have also been poet laureates.

Hillman, a professor of poetry at Saint Mary’s College of California, says she has an ability to bring what she calls the outer and the inner together, and to express inner worlds of feeling and imagination that can often be very odd.

“Sometimes I’ll put punctuation around my poems or I’ll put extra punctuation in my poems as a sort of music casing,” explained Hillman. “Sometimes I want things to have illustrations, so I put photographs in my poems.”

With many students in attendance at the reading, a few admitted that they didn’t read much poetry at all, but after hearing Hillman read her work, they now have a better perspective on poetry.

All Verse Like Water events are free and open to the public and are held at noon in the Chalberg Theatre at CLC’s Brainerd campus. The next event will be on November 16 with Nigerian poet Chris Abani.