Poetry enthusiasts and non-enthusiasts alike are in for a treat today at 4 p.m. in Hawkins Hall, where esteemed poet Alice Friman will be holding a poetry reading. Hopefully, students will get a lot more out of the event than just a Troy University 1101 Orientation passport credit.
Friman’s prolific career as a writer includes awards such as the 2012 Georgia Author of the Year Award in Poetry, the Pushcart Prize and many others.
She has published five full-length collections of poetry: “The Book of the Rotten Daughter,” “Zoo,” “Inverted Fire,” “Reporting from Corinth” and “Vinculum.”
English Assistant Professor Patricia Waters shares Friman’s long-standing passion for poetry, and is responsible for orchestrating the poetry reading.
“Alice Friman is a personal friend of mine,” Waters said.
“I’ve known her for nearly 20 years. We have been to many poetry gatherings together—we’ve read together, we’ve travelled to the same places. We’re friends and colleagues. I have come to really admire her work over the years, and I think she’s one of the best poets writing in America today.”
Friman is a writer who stresses the importance of the written word in the face of a world driven by the instant gratification that technology offers. It is through poetry, which she lovingly refers to as “the lonely struggle of stringing words together,” that she hopes to convey the importance of emotion in life, and living deeply.
Still, Friman has embraced to the role that technology plays in our lives with her Ask Alice podcast, in which she discusses poetry’s role in her everyday life.
This fresh approach, in combination with her willingness to adapt to change, lends a certain amount of allure to her work to readers of all ages and backgrounds.
But it is the universal appeal of her poems’ themes that draws in the largest crowds.
“She is also a woman who has had relationships with people, as a lover and friend and wife and mother,” Waters said.
“She is a poet who understands the role of deep emotion in life. She reads about love. She reads about relationships… things that everybody is interested in.”
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