Almost every seat was filled in Stewart Hall on Tuesday night for the reading in celebration of Shippensburg’s Associate Professor of English, Dr. Jordan Windholz’s new book, “The Sisters,” even though there was limited advertising for the event.

The evening began with a few words from Professor Neil Connelly on the importance of poetry, and then Editor-in-Chief of The Reflector Kylie Saar introduced Windholz to the room. The author of “The Sisters” spoke first about the inspiration for the book of prose poems. It was born out of the idea of writing bedtime stories for his daughters and from there morphed into the final product. Windholz then moved on to talk very briefly about the community of people who helped to make “The Sisters” possible, including the artist who created the 11 amazing pictures for the book, Deanna Dorangrichia, before progressing to the reading of several of the poems from the book.

Windholz fittingly began the poetry reading with “The Sisters in the Night,” the first poem of his book. The first line of the poem, “together, but they didn’t know how they arrived,” could also be seen on the first screen of the slideshow of pictures from the book that cycled on a loop throughout the reading of “The Sisters.” Each poem tells a story of sisters without clear definition of age or individual identity, but the story-poems serve as windows into the fantastical fairy tale worlds that these sisters inhabit. 

“The conceit of the book,” as described by Windholz, “is sisters in various situations and circumstances, some joyful and happy, many tragic.” These poems are essentially love letters from Windholz to his daughters. 

“The Sisters as Red Riding Hood,” Windholz shared that the sisters “don’t really make it in all the poems” because “one thing about being a parent is you think about your kids and their vulnerability quite a bit … and in writing this, I was figuring out a way to speak to my children about their vulnerability and their strength.” This is what he wanted listeners to take note of as they heard him read “The Sisters and the Sea.” 

The final poem Windholz read was the last poem of his book, “The Sisters in an Unbidden Time,” and after having read for a total of twenty minutes, he introduced his friend and fellow poet Michael Flatt. Flatt was on campus to teach a publishing workshop earlier in the day that following the reading of “The Sisters” by Windholz. Flatt then read a selection of poems from his book, “I Can Focus If I Try.”

Flatt is, in addition to a poet, a book designer and the founder of Low Frequency Press and Threadsuns, a teaching press at High Point University. One can see at a glance Flatt’s bold use of typesetting in “I Can Focus If I Try.” A reader will have to rotate the book a full 360° in order to read each of the poems. The themes of Flatt’s poetry center around the “viscera and the virtual, the iris and the lens,” blending the vibrancy of life with the digital and pixelated technology. 

Flatt prefaced before he started reading that his style as a reader of poetry in front of a crowd is to set a timer for himself and read until the timer goes off. Flatt read the entire first section of his book in around nine and a half minutes. After reading those first twenty-two pages of “I Can Focus If I Try,” Flatt mostly jumped around to random poems throughout the book.

Connelly said a few words to draw the evening to a close by encouraging students to continue to be inspired to write, students were then entreated to pick up the limited free copies of both “The Sisters” and “I Can Focus If I Try,” as well as Dorangrichia’s illustrations for “The Sisters,” which were available in postcard form. 

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