Poet Gary Dop kicks off annual Writers Read series

Poet Gary Dop is the first guest of the annual Writers Read lecture series at Eastern Mennonite University (EMU). He speaks Thursday, Sept. 15, at 8:30 p.m. in Lehman Auditorium. Admission is free with a student ID and $5 for all others at the door.

Dop is a professor at Randolph College. He earned his master’s in English from the University of Nebraska at Kearney and an MFA from University of Nebraska. After wide publication in a number of prestigious journals, Dop published his first collection of poems “Father, Child, Water” in spring of 2015 (Red Hen Press).

“An actor as well as a poet, Dop promises to be a very entertaining and effective reader of his poetry,” said Professor Mike Medley, chair of EMU’s Language and Literature Department. Medley noted that all first-year students will be in attendance at the event, and for some, this event will be their first poetry reading.

Dop’s website provides two digital readings of his poetry, which give listeners a glimpse of his sense of humor and thematic choices. “As an English professor, I regularly encounter people who think I’ve read every book ever written,” he explains before reading a poem titled “How to Pretend You’ve Read Moby Dick.” “Pause as though considering the sea…Gaze two inches to the right of their eye, as though you’ve lost something precious in their ear…

On National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered,” Dop reads a poem entitled “’B’ or not a ‘B’?” a conglomeration of student-written confusions regarding Shakespeare, his plays and the Elizabethan times.

As a poet who values performance and has won an award for his stand-up comedy, Dop has entertained audiences at university and community events throughout the country. In 2009, he was one of five poets to qualify for the top rated performance poetry team in the country.

Before coming to Virginia, Dop served as writer-­in-­residence at North Central University in Minneapolis. He has worked extensively in the Midwest, advocating for creative writing in rural areas and working with gifted high school students in south central Nebraska. He serves on the editorial board of Spark News Press and enjoys working with the Twin Cities organization that publishes the Rain Taxi Review of Books and sponsors the Twin Cities Book Festival in Minneapolis.