Author To Discuss Poetry Collection With Students

Author Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello will visit various Miami Dade College classes to discuss her poetry collection Hour of the Ox, starting on March 13 as part of Women’s History Month Speaker Series. She will visit English, literature and creative writing classes to read poems, discuss interpretations and historical context, and look at the creative elements present in Hour of the Ox.

“This poetry collection is one exploration of the universal immigrant narrative and considers the many elements to be from somewhere, going somewhere and everything in between,” Calabretta said.

Hour of the Ox follows a loose narrative about a family living in Jeju Island, South Korea and is centered around the dying legacy of pearl divers. Her poems explore how a family does and doesn’t grieve when the son drowns, and the daughter becomes heir in a time where pearl divers are becoming extinct.

Calabretta has been awarded a Kundiman Asian American Poetry Fellowship and a John S. and James L. Knight Fellowship. Hour of the Ox won the 2015 AWP Donald Hall Prize for Poetry. She is also cofounder and editor for the online magazine Print-Oriented Bastards and producer for The Working Poet Radio Show.

Professors may request class visits via email at lmendez@mdc.edu.