South Carolina-based poet Richard Garcia will perform a public reading from his four volumes of poetry at noon Wednesday, Nov. 14, at Brenau University's Banks Recital Hall in the Burd Center for Performing Arts. The poet will also answer questions about his unique writing style and work habits in a separate session at 3 p.m. at the Writing Center in Brenau Trustee Library.

Noted for his highly readable "experimental" style of narrative poetry, the 66-year-old San Francisco-born Garcia is the author of four volumes of poetry, including "The Persistence of Objects," published last year, and a bilingual children´s book, "My Aunt Otilla´s Spirits."

"Garcia writes with descriptive, colorful language, with a lot of wit," said Brenau Humanities Professor Sandra Brim, the university's liaison to the Georgia Poetry Circuit, which is sponsoring Garcia's appearance in Gainesville and at other colleges and universities throughout the state. "He appeals to a multi-cultural audience with an almost conversational voice that taps into the oral story-telling tradition."

In one poem, "My Father's False Teeth," he describes the titled subject as

"… clicking like a wooden gate
with a metal latch, swinging
open, swinging closed.
In a water glass at night
They float like an exhibit
in formaldehyde
of a stillborn child.
The nightlight shining
through the glass--
a spelunkers flashlight
in an underwater cave
illuminating the fossilized
toothed beak of a fierce bird,
now extinct."

The poet even turns historian/anthropologist in describing later on how George Washington's famous choppers were made.

Although one reviewer suggests that you never know who might turn up in a Garcia poem - Washington, Squanto or Ponce De Leon - he is also very personal in describing his dreams, emotions and sometimes off-the-wall impressions. But as a fellow poet, Russian-born Ilya Kaminsky of Berkeley, Calif., describes the Garcia style, "his words, so courageous and consoling in their imaginative power, are meant to connect with other human beings; Garcia does this with grace. [His poems are] at once heartbreaking and hilarious, where page after page we realize that Garcia´s world of dreams is ours - inescapably ours."

Garcia holds an MFA in creative writing from Warren Wilson College. His first book of poems, The Flying Garcias, was published in 1993 followed by Rancho Notorious in 2001. He has won several prestigious awards and prizes for his writing. His work has appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies, including Touching the Fire: Fifteen Poets of Today´s Latino Renaissance and The Best American Poetry 2005. He has served as poet-in-residence for 12 years at Children´s Hospital has taught for the Antioch graduate writing program, both located in Los Angeles.

He and his wife Katherine Williams, also a poet who describes herself as "a lapsed Existentialist," live at James Island, S.C.

Garcia's reading will be at noon in Banks Recital Hall at the Burd Center for Performing Arts on the Brenau campus. The question-and-answer session will be at 3 p.m. in the The Writing Center In Brenau's Trustee Library. Both events are free and open to the public.

For more information, call Brim at 770-534-6195.