berks county introduces
its fourth poet laureate
by jennifer hetrick
exactly one month ago, berks county warmly welcomed craig czury as its fourth poet laureate.
reading area community college has proudly sponsored the poet laureateship since it created the county's pro-literacy post in the mid-1990s.
( dolores kirschner of clay on main in oley gabbing a bit with craig czury following
his induction ceremony at reading area community college )
( craig czury and marilyn klimcho of berks bards chatterboxing away after czury became the fourth poet laureate of berks county )
czury follows in the footsteps of the most recent poet laureate, heather thomas, an english professor at kutztown university who also happens to be his life partner of almost two decades.
with 25 applicants competing for the title, czury became poet laureate after a committee blind-judged ten poems by each writer, with renowned northampton county poet paul martin making the final decision.
czury earned a curiously named master's of fine arts degree in creative nonpoetry at wilkes university in 2008.
calling czury eccentric is doing only a quarter of language’s labor, as before he settled down into berks county after meeting thomas, he spent a good amount of years hitchhiking across the united states, last living in mexico before relocating more permanently to pennsylvania.
in his time on foot, he preferred walks to his eventual destinations, as opposed to thumbing it and taking rides by car and truck.
having worked all sorts of jobs included to be found in the american midwest by those not bothered with the idea of an impermanent residence, czury earned his first award for a poem while lightly residing in montana in the early 1980s.
today, he has published well more than a dozen books of poetry with many foreign translations, sharing the wealth of words through a grant he received from the national endowment for the arts.
czury teaches english composition at albright college and has recently been invited to instruct a creative writing course during the interim semester, under the class title finding poetry in the glossary of sciences.
he is also currently teaching a class mingling memoir and poetry at goggleworks.
when not in the berks county area, czury has residencies in a number of private schools, including ones in delaware and washington, d.c. where he spends a week each academic year.
“my best classes are third and fourth grades,” czury said. “i’m trying to explore with them where poetry comes from, and those kids are still magic.”
czury has done poetry workshops in community centers, homeless shelters, mental hospitals, battered women's shelters, preschools, and prisons.
in 1993, he changed the spelling of his legal name from churry to czury in order to give the hungarian name a polish spelling after being adopted and finally meeting his birth mother.
since studying alongside poets who were so consumed with the identity and character which place creates, czury now encourages his students to change their names.
“poetry is a language that i turned to when i was young because my teachers didn’t understand it,” czury revealed. “they couldn’t flunk me for it, and my parents couldn’t punish me for it.”
“poetry was a private language in a secret handwriting,” he added with a stir.
czury often hangs sets of old gathered words on walls, fusing together the lines that speak to him nearly in song.
"i'm just in the trenches: i’m like the poet warrior," he said of himself.
“she’s the poet scholar," czury illustrated about his predecessor and amour, thomas. "i like that—that makes sense to me, and it’s definitely a good dynamic.”
( third berks county poet laureate heather thomas
and newly sworn-in poet laureate, craig czury )
“every poem is a letter to someone who’s far away,” czury finally admitted, explaining how he first stretched out his skills at writing, when he penned letters to himself (and chicks who were known to “dig poetry”) in junior high before discovering his most inspiring fellow poets in montana by the time he was in his 20s.
when not investing his time in writing and teaching, czury is a fan of playing bocce ball and blues harp.
fittingly enough, the night of his induction, a man he’d met at a poetry reading the night before gave czury a bottle of papaya juice and a baggie of pickled sausage in congrats. he ate the sausage upon leaving the ceremony.
