| Fearnside poems explore life abroad |
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| Written by Sentinel-Tribune Staff |
| Friday, 20 May 2011 08:47 |
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(Updated at 8:19am, 05-23-11) Former area resident Jeff Fearnside won a poetry chapbook competition sponsored by the Standing Rock Cultural Arts in Kent. As a result the Kent arts organization has published a chapbook of his poetry “Lake and Other Poems of Love in a Foreign Land.” The book, which is available at Grounds for Thought, 174 S. Main St., Bowling Green, features verse about Fearnside’s four years living in the Central Asia, both in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. He went first as a Peace Corps volunteer teaching English and then as manager of a graduate fellowship program. While there he met his wife, Valentina. Fearnside writes of he and his wife: “We will always remember that love chooses us; “we don’t choose the place of love.” The poems in “Lake” are candid descriptions of life in a strange culture that’s at once fascinating and alienating. The characters in his poems are reeling in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union, uncertain if their new freedoms are better than the certainties of the old regime. The scenes show how traditional life collides with the new global order. One poem contrasts sharing vodka to the din of techno music and being served a cup of chai by a hostess, longing all the while for a shot of whiskey. Fearnside graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Writing from Bowling Green State University, and later earned his Master of Fine Arts from Eastern Washington University. He lives in Prescott, Ariz., and teaches writing and literature at Prescott College. He also has written two prose manuscripts “Silk Road Tales,” accounts of his travels in Asia, and “Making Love While Levitating Three Feet in the Air,” a short story collection. |
| Last Updated on Monday, 23 May 2011 08:20 |
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