A newsletter for the students, faculty and staff of the Collin County Community College District. Published monthly. For information or submissions, call 972.758.3849. Cougar News welcomes student and faculty submissions. Next deadline: Sept. 10. All submissions are due by 5 p.m. on the due date. Photos cannot be returned. Text should be emailed to mrobinson@ccccd.edu or sent on disk. Please submit copy that is proofed, edited and saved in Word format. Cougar News staff: Lisa Vasquez, director; Mark Robinson, editor; Marcy Cadena-Smith, contributor; Sydney Portilla-Diggs, student correspondent; Stephanie Hall, student correspondent; Ana Colores Palmer, student correspondent; Nick Young, photographer; Layout by Publications
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Texas Poet Laureate schedules visit
 Betwixt the rattle and hum of a new dawn of a semester comes the poet laureate.
Alan Birkelbach, the Texas Poet Laureate, will visit the Spring Creek Campus, Wednesday, Oct. 5 and Thursday, Oct. 6. Birkelbach is scheduled to speak at a Collin creative writing class Oct. 5, and he will give a lecture and poetry reading at 11:30 a.m., Thursday, Oct. 6, in the Spring Creek Campus Conference Center. He will be available until 1 p.m. for questions and book signings.
A Plano resident since 1983, Birkelbach was notified of the honor of being selected the state’s laureate in May by the Texas Commission on the Arts, which seeks a poet laureate, a state musician, a state two-dimensional artists and a state three-dimensional artist.
Birkelbach has been writing since he was 12.
However, he said he has taken his writing a little more seriously over the past 15 years. As poet laureate, Birkelbach has no official duties, but he said it is hard to just sit still.
“Just about every State Laureate I've spoken to felt like they should be doing something, regardless of whether that was being accessible, performing readings, going to schools, holding workshops -- just generally presenting poetry to Texas,” he said. “Ultimately, it is about not forgetting what brought us the title: writing. We cannot stop being what we are because that is what is expected.”
Birkelbach’s visit comes at the request of Communications and Humanities Interim Dean Dr. Gerry Perkus, who said Birkelbach’s appointment as poet laureate is an honor for the city and county.
“After reading about him and the kind of poetry he writes, I thought that it would be a good opportunity for students to experience a working poet, who is working out of the community,” Perkus said.
Also, last year the college hosted the poet laureate from Minnesota, Richard Terrill, an event that garnered a lot of interest in the college, Perkus said.
“We are making a serious effort to expand our lecture series and we hope to open this up to the community as well,” he said. Birkelbach’s latest collection of poetry is titled “No Boundaries” and carries a Southwest and Texas foundation. The Oct. 6 lecture, poetry reading and book signing is open to the public and free.
For more information, contact the Communications and Humanities Division at 972.881.5812.
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