TMCC alumna and published poet, Itzel Perez Vargas.
“Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words,” said the renowned poet Robert Frost.
At Truckee Meadows Community College, student poets have painted emotion into thought, and faculty members are transforming thought into evocative words.
“Two of TMCC's students, who took my poetry workshop English 220, have been published in the Dark River Review, which is the national undergraduate literary magazine sponsored by the Department of Languages and Literature at Alabama State University,” wrote Lindsay Wilson, English Professor.
- Itzel Perez Vargas, “Brown Girl on a Swing”
- Gina Stratos, “Of Daisies and Rust”
The Dark River Review has included three of Perez Vargas’ works in this issue.
Itzel Perez Vargas
Vargas completed an Associate of Arts, Anthropology at TMCC, and is now a junior at the University of Nevada, Reno. She tutors English in the TMCC Tutoring and Learning Center (TLC).
“I started reading poetry, and in high school I found myself writing some,” she said. “Then at TMCC, I took Lindsay Wilson’s poetry class and found that I had something to say, and poetry was the best way to say it.”
Poetry is a way for her to express herself and her journey.
“I was published here in The Meadow,” Perez Vargas said. “Lindsay kept us updated of where we could publish, the national publications where they are accepting submissions, and I thought ‘Why not?’”
Gina Stratos
Gina Stratos' published work in the Dark River Review is a fiction story.
“She's a wonderful student who has been a teaching assistant in English class for Professor Mai Anh McMurray, and has been a tutor in the Writing Center with TLC Coordinator Michelle Montoya,” Wilson added.
Stratos also has three poems published in Rabid Oak, a new literary journal. The online publication is led by a team including Matthew Woodman, Lecturer in English at California State University Bakersfield. Woodman has contributed works to TMCC's journal, The Meadow, as well.
“I think it's really neat that our students are able to publish in national literary journals,” Wilson wrote. “Gina and Itzel were both in the last issue of ‘The Meadow.’”
TMCC Poetry Event in April
Each year in the spring, the Library Committee hosts a campus community poetry reading. All students, faculty and staff members are welcome to read at the event, or come and listen along with fellow members of the TMCC community.
- When: Thursday, April 19, 2–4:30 p.m.
- Where: SIER 108
“It’s ‘Love, Lust, and Lunacy,’ TMCC’s annual poetry reading of original and favorite poems to celebrate TMCC poet Hank Sosnowski,” said Neil Siegel, Resource Librarian. “Copies of Hank’s book ‘Love, Lust, and Lunacy’ will be available if you’d like to read one his poems.”
Perhaps the poetry will inspire those who attend.
“I found that poetry is such a good way to share my lived experiences and I hope that someone who reads it would connect to it and feel something,” Perez Vargas said. “Someday I’d like to have a book published.”
For more information about studying English at TMCC, please call 775-673-7092, and for the poetry event, please call Neil Siegel at 775-674-7608.