Special guests planned for Northeast Texas Poetry Reading

The Tenth Annual Northeast Texas Poetry Reading at Northeast Texas Community College will include special remarks by two local educators. †Dr. Elaine Beason, a retired professor of Texas A&M University-Texarkana, and Kristin Ellermann, a young educator who taught with the Peace Corps in the Republic of Georgia, and also as a Disney instructor in Shanghai, China, will supplement the reading of winning poems with observations about local life.

[caption id="attachment_5016" align="alignleft" width="146"] Dr. Elaine Beason[/caption]

Both Beason and Ellermann have spent a number of years outside Northeast Texas, only to return here.† Beason is a Dallas native who taught in the Dallas schools during the era of integration. †She studied at A&M Commerce, worked for a time in Region VIII, moved to Kansas to teach at Fort Hays State University, and finally returned to Northeast Texas, and Mount Pleasant.† Ellermann, a former Mount Pleasant Valedictorian, and NTCC Presidential Scholar, is fluent in†three languages, and has a basic conversational proficiency in French and Chinese. She is teaching this year at Pittsburg Elementary.† Her brother, Mark Ellermann, just accepted the offer to teach full-time, as a Physics professor at NTCC.

The poetry reading will again occur in the foyer of the Whatley Center for the Performing Arts.† The program will begin at 11 a.m. on Friday, Sept. 8, and will last about an hour.† The Reading is free and the general public is invited to hear recent and thoughtful perceptions about life in our area of Texas.

 

[caption id="attachment_5017" align="alignleft" width="150"] Kristin Ellermann[/caption]

Student prizes, from first to fourth are $400, 300, $200 and $100.† There are also two adult awards for $200 and $50.† The deadline for the submission of poems, which should concern the life, culture, or history of Northeast Texas, is Friday, Sept. 1 at noon. There is no cost to enter.† Poems can be of any length or style and should be submitted to†ayox@ntcc.edu.† Preliminary questions can also be addressed to Dr. Andrew Yox at that same e-mail address.† Poets should supply their phone numbers, towns of residence, and status as an adult or student.