NJPoets.com - Skylands Writers & Artists Assoc., Inc.

NJPoets Index

Great NJ Poet's Portraits

NJ Fiction

NJ Reviews

NJ Contest Winners

NJPoets News

Gioseffi.com

PoetsUSA.com
(Wise Women's Web)

Italian American Writers.com

NJ Past Events

JAMES HABA, POET & EMMY AWARD WINNING PRODUCER, with BILL MOYERS, of the Language of Life, to APPEAR for SKYLANDS WRITERS'CELEBRATING LITERARY NJ

For nearly fourteen years, poet, James Haba has been the Dodge Foundation's poetry program coordinator, and the designer and producer of the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival--the nation's largest poetry festival--held bienially in Waterloo Village. HABA is a poet who teaches in the English Department at Rowan University and holds a BA from Reed College and a Ph.D. From Cornell University. Haba has read throughout the Northeast and on March 21st, Sunday at 3pm, he'll be presenting his work and talking about his life as an entrepreneur of poetry in New Jersey, for The Skylands Writers & Artists Associations's Celebrating Literary NJ Series -- now in its fourth year at Centenary College. Celebrating Literary NJ is made possible by a grant from the New Jersey Council for the Humanities, a state program of The National Endowment for the Humaniteis. James Haba's poems are frequently published in anthologies and literary magazines and he's won both fellowships and prizes.

The program at Centenary will be held in the Front Parlors of the Main Building at 400 Jefferson St., in Hackettstown, and is free and open to the public. Celebrating Literary N J , a series instituted and hosted by NJ author and American Book Award Winner, Daniela Gioseffi, founding president of Skylands Writers & Artists Association with the cooperation of Dr. Robert Frail of Centenary's Humanities Dept. The series has hosted notable authors, Stephen Dunn , Pabloe Medina, and Alicia Ostriker, among many others. James Haba's talk and reading will be followed by an open reading in which all are invited to present a brief piece of poetry or short prose. There will be a reception with the poet, and time to mingle and discuss literature or ask questions. All are welcome. For info. Tel. Centenary College at (908) 852-1400, Ext. 2267 or SWAA, Inc. (908)-786-7947.

As the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation's Poetry Coordinator, Haba designs and directs a program which provides a wide range of opportunities for both teachers and students to deepen their experience of poetry. This program sends dozens of regional poets into the high schools of New Jersey and offers a variety of poetry experiences to teachers throughout the state. The Waterloo Poetry Festivals run for four days and typically involve a hundred poets many with national andinternational reputations. Each Festival typically attracts a general audience of between 5,000 and 6,000, in addition to 4,000 high school students and 1,500 teachers. The eighth Festival will take place in September 2000, again at Waterloo Village here in the Skylands region. James Haba was Series and Poetry Consultant for the sixteen hours of national PBS television programs with Bill Moyers which have come out of these Festivals: The Power of the Word; A Life Together: Donald Hall and Jane Kenyon; Poet Laureate, Rita Dove , and best known, The Language of Life.

Two of these programs --The Living Language (I 989) from The Power Of the Word series and A Life Together: Donald Hall and Jane Kenyon.(l 993) won Emmys as Best Television Interview Documentary for the year in which they were first broadcast. In addition to being principal writer and advisor for the nationally distributed Teacher Guides prepared for both The Power of the Word and The Language of Life series, James Haba also edited the best-selling book The Language of Life (Doubleday, 1995) which accompanied the television series of the same name and included interviews and poems from the other 8 poetry television programs which Bill Moyers hosted and produced since 1989. In 1997 and 1998 he served as Series Poetry Consultant for Poetry Heaven, the three hour video series produced by GeoVision (of Boston) from the 1996 Festival. Poetry Heaven was broadcast in New Jersey and New York during the spring of 1998 and released by satellite for broadcast nationally.

On September 24, 1998 Haba coordinated and hosted the first live national satellite broadcast from a Dodge Poetry Festival. This two-hour broadcast, also carried live by New Jersey Network, featured Lucille Clifton, Mark Doty, and Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky in addition to two dozen recent winners of New Jersey State High School Poetry Contests. The broadcast's interactive element enabled students throughout the country to join the Festival audience in discussions with the poets. Currently, Mr. Haba is an advisor for Bill Moyers' latest television project, which features the 1998 Dodge Poetry Festival. This two-hour PBS special will be broadcast nationally on September 21, 1999. Haba also studied drawing and sculpture at The Studio School in New York City from 1968 through 1970 and continues to work as a visual artist, producing ceramic tile murals of his own design and also those designed and executed by his wife, Erica Barton Haba at their studio in Belle Mead , The Painted Tile. James Haba's work is shown in Boston and New York and he has installations throughout the country. His latest major commission involved a series of murals which are part of the re-novation and expansion of a Philip Johnson house in Irvington, New York State. The free program at Centenary College on March 21st, Sunday afternoon at 3 pm, promises to be both enlightening and enjoyable.

[Back to Top]

NJPoets.com