Valentine’s Day brought flowers, chocolates and cards, but those who didn’t get enough poetry have another chance to listen to the lyrical verse.

The Wick Poetry Center is hosting a poetry reading by the 2004 Wick Chapbook winners Joanne Lehman and Maureen Passmore at 7:30 p.m. tomorrow in room 306 of the Student Center.

The reading is the first of three events in the Wick Poetry series this semester. The chapbook competition is held each year in two categories: The open competition for any poet currently residing in Ohio and the student competition for any poet enrolled in an Ohio institute of higher learning. The competition receives 30 to 60 entrants in either category each year.

According to Joyce Norr, Wick Poetry administrative assistant, the competition has been sponsored since 1992. Both Lehman and Passmore had a chapbook published by the Kent State University Press and can be purchased at the University Bookstore or viewed in the reading room of the Wick Poetry Center in Satterfield Hall.

David Hassler, program and outreach director, said Passmore and Lehman will meet with two creative writing classes during the day to discuss their poems, and at the event they will read some of their new work as well as from their chapbooks.

The reading will last one hour with each winner presenting for about 25 to 30 minutes. A question and answer session will follow.

Passmore’s chapbook is Stranger Truths. She has had poems published in Sycamore Review and has won the Mississippi Review Poetry Prize. The Pittsburgh resident earned her Master of Fine Arts from Bowling Green State University where she received the Distinguished Master’s Thesis Award.

Lehman won with her chapbook, Morning Song. She is also the author of Kairos and Traces of Treasure: Quest for God in the Commonplace. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in communication arts from Malone College. Lehman occasionally teaches writing at the Wayne Center for the Arts and Communication Skills at Malone College, and she lives in Apple Creek.

Contact College of Arts and Sciences reporter Heather Bing at [email protected].