In celebration of National Poetry Month, the Klein Family School of Communications Design is hosting its annual poetry reading for the UB community. Students, faculty and staff are invited to read their favorite poem on Wednesday, April 6 from 12-1 p.m. in LAP 308. You are also welcome to attend without reading, but reading is encouraged! Refreshments will be served.

Come share your favorite poem with other poetry lovers, and come away with new favorites! To sign up to read a poem, email kkopelke@ubalt.edu.

Join us for “From Rights to Rhetoric: Why Voting Matters” this Thursday, March 31 from 6-8 p.m. in the H. Mebane Turner Learning Commons Town Hall. Our panel of experts will provide multiple perspectives on voter registration and legislation to help you become more informed before Election Day. Refreshments will follow the discussion.

RSVP on OrgSync: https://orgsync.com/86827/events/1082806/occurrences/2409207

On March 22, 23 and 25, the University of Baltimore will host forums for the Democratic and Republican candidates for the Baltimore mayoral race and the Maryland representative to U.S. Senate race. The forums are co-sponsored by the University of Baltimore’s College of Public Affairs, Yale Gordon College of Arts and Sciences and Schaefer Center for Public Policy, the Baltimore City League of Women Voters, The Baltimore Sun and WJZ-TV, who will be taping the forums for rebroadcast. The forums are FREE and open to the public, but tickets are required for entry.

In addition to the forums, the Schaefer Center and the College of Public Affairs have been working in conjunction with The Baltimore Sun to keep tabs on voters’ thoughts through co-sponsored polls as the primaries approach.

To reserve tickets, submit questions for the candidates and read commentary on the latest Sun/UB election poll results, visit www.ubalt.edu/election2016.

The Klein Family School of Communications Design is the new home of the Baltimore Poetry Library, and on Saturday, March 5, the school hosted an opening of the collection. The Baltimore Poetry Library is a compilation of thousands of volumes of poetry in various formats that constitutes the single largest collection of poetry in the mid-Atlantic region. The collection’s curators Douglas Mowbray and Christophe Casamassima have been accumulating the materials since 2003. They decided to house the collection at UB because of the reputation of the School of Communications Design—specifically the School’s MFA in Creative Writing & Publishing Arts as a welcoming place for Baltimore writers.

According to Casamassima, “The goal of the Baltimore Poetry Library is to document and archive the full history of Baltimore’s various literary communities, to acquire every piece of literature ever published in Baltimore, by Baltimore writers, and by Baltimore publishers, and to make that collection available to students, scholars and lovers of poetry.”

Mowbray hopes that the community will see the collection “not as a museum to showcase poetry books, but rather a petting zoo that encourages the tactile experience.”

Over the next several months, Casamassima, Mowbray, and School of Communications Design faculty will develop policies for community access to the collection.