Feb. 17, 2009

The recipient of the 2007 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for poetry will deliver a reading at 7 p.m. on Thursday, March 5, at OSU. American poet Stanley Plumly will read from Old Heart Poems, which also was a National Book Award Finalist.

The event is free and open to the public in the Peggy V. Helmerich Browsing Room at the Edmon Low Library in Stillwater. Plumly also will talk at 11 a.m. on Friday, March 6, in the French Lounge of the OSU Student Union.

He is the director of creative writing and a professor at the University of Maryland. His work has been published in The American Poetry Review, The New Yorker, The New York Times and The Paris Review. His poems and essays have been selected for 40 anthologies.

Feb. 20, 2009

Robert Bullard, called one of the century’s environmental leaders by Newsweek Magazine, will discuss environmental discrimination on Wednesday, March 4, starting at 3:30 p.m. in Room 313 of the Classroom Building at OSU.

Bullard, who has worked in the environmental justice field for more than two decades, will discuss how people living near waste sites are predominantly minorities. Discussion topics include placing landfills in poor neighborhoods; building housing projects on contaminated sites; and chemical companies encroaching on property lines.

“Dr. Bullard shows us that everybody has the right to a safe and healthy environment,” said Patricia Bell, head of the OSU Department of Sociology. “Just because you are poor doesn’t mean you should be dumped on." She also noted the lecture topic is especially fitting since it is on the heels of the recent announcement that public housing is being placed in Tar Creek, one of the sites placed on the Environmental Protection Agency Superfund list.