“Amazing” Poet Reads Thursday Night

Poet Greg Brownderville, author of the 2011 poetry collection Gust, will read from his work Thursday, Feb. 21, at 8 p.m. in the Core Classroom.

In his lush like kudzu lines Brownderville narrates stories of Ozark holy rollers, backwood voodoo rituals, tornadoes touching down, gigging for frogs on the brown river and more, stirred to a boil by the voice of a young man coming of age and trying to figure out what it all means.

The write-up at Amazon.com summarizes the sweep and modus operandi of these poems well:

Brownderville commands the complex eloquence of Southerners who love not only local color but also high-flown rhetoric. Instead of reinforcing stereotypes about rural folks’ thought and speech, he challenges our assumptions by presenting real life as a festival of mixed diction.

Highlights include a press conference with a bizarrely poetic rural sheriff, a Zimbabwean meter never before employed in English, a rock and roll song interrupted by a Walmart intercom, and poems about the exploitation of Italians in Arkansas cotton fields.

A native of Pumpkin Bend, Arkansas, Brownderville is an Assistant Professor of English at Southern Methodist University. He will be on campus on Friday as well and will speak to sections of American Lit classes taught by Prof. Jeremy Elliot. On Saturday the poet will give a noon reading at the CCTE conference being hosted by our department in the Hunter Welcome Center.