Poetry @ The Public

Jacob Stratman & Suzanne Rhodes

We're starting our Spring 2025 Poetry @ The Public with John Brown dean and professor, Jacob Stratman, and state poet laureate, Suzanne Underwood Rhodes.

We are thrilled to invite you to join us for an afternoon of light refreshments, community, and poetry! Doors will open at 2:00 pm for light refreshments and a meet-and-greet with the authors. At 2:30 pm we'll take our seats and hear selected readings from Jacob and Suzanne's work. Attendees are invited to ask questions of the authors and stay after the readings for some community socialization. We're so excited to have Suzanne back at the Library and are looking forward to making a new poet connect with Jacob!

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More about the authors:

Suzanne Underwood Rhodes is the current Arkansas Poet Laureate. A native of New York, she lives in Fayetteville and has published several poetry collections, including the award-winning Flying Yellow and this year two chapbooks, Flyways and the Perfume of Pain. Her poems appear regularly in journals and anthologies such as SLANT, Mid/South Anthology, Alaska Quarterly Review, and Image. She taught creative writing and literature at King University and other colleges and teaches virtual poetry workshops through the Muse Writers Center in Norfolk, Virginia. Believing poetry, like books, to be “an ax for the frozen sea within,” as Kafka said, she also brings poetry workshops to the women residents of Magdalene Serenity House and “Poetry on Purpose” to residents in a memory care center, both groups in Fayetteville.

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Jacob (Jake) Stratman lives with his wife and their two sons in Siloam Springs, Arkansas, where he is a professor of English and dean of the college of Bible, Arts, and Humanities at John Brown University. After earning a BA from William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri, he taught English and coached soccer in the Springfield Public School system in Springfield, Missouri, for six years. During that time, he completed his M.A. in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing at Missouri State University. He later earned a Ph.D. in English from Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Jake is the author of What I Have I Offer with Two Hands, published in 2019 by Cascade Books as part of its Poiema Poetry Series.

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