(Butler, PA) Her great-aunt Martha had given Angel Rosen a journal containing dotted-lined pages, a gift the autistic child assumed was intended for drawings.
“I couldn’t draw,” Rosen said. “I was really bad at coordination, so I felt like I couldn’t express myself because my hands and my body just wouldn’t translate my feelings into movement.”
She began to dislike the journal. “Really hating it,” Rosen said. “I was angry about not being able to draw.”
One day, the 8-year-old opened the small, pastel-blue journal and, pressing her pen hard, nearly perforating the page, wrote MAYBE I’LL BE A POET INSTEAD.
On April 20, the Armstrong County poet will return to Butler County Community College to read from her books “Aurelia” and “Blake” during the college’s second Northern Appalachia Reading Series event.
Rosen earned an associate degree in general studies from BC3 in 2014, said her works benefited from poetry classes taken with Eric Pedersen, a former English professor, and will read poems titled “Cherries,” “Anchor,” “The Ides of Endometriosis” and others at 6 p.m. in the 6-year-old Heaton Family Learning Commons on BC3’s main campus.
Free public reading 5th in Heaton
BC3’s Northern Appalachia Reading Series event is free and open to the public, will include an open-mic session before Rosen’s reading, and questions and answers, signings of her self-published books and light refreshments afterward.
Rosen’s public reading will be the fifth since 2018 in a $6.4 million Heaton Family Learning Commons whose architecture in 2017 was recognized by Library Journal, at 146 the nation’s oldest magazine devoted to libraries.
“The Heaton is always gorgeous,” said Mike Dittman, a professor in BC3’s liberal arts division and author. “This is the community’s college. These artistic and cultural enrichment activities are open to everyone. It’s a great night of art for free.”
A night of art also intended to be interactive, Dittman said.
“You’re going to get to see not only this more polished poet in Angel,” Dittman said, “but you are going to get to see this wide variety of artists from the community and the college.”
Rosen’s art began at 8. Her first poem, about a blue cow.
“The cow was too big,” Rosen said. “And she laughed a lot, but didn’t have any friends.”
How does it end?
“It doesn’t,” Rosen said. “It’s something I’m still writing.”
She describes the format used within her 58-page “Aurelia” and 54-page “Blake” as confessional poetry – “poetry,” Rosen said, “written from the ‘I’ standpoint.”
“Emotional nourishment” from poetic art
The theme of “Aurelia” is “mental illness, having a sense of otherness and not belonging,” Rosen said, and of “Blake,” about being loved for being authentic and to love someone’s entirety.
“There are people whose emotional nourishment comes from poetic art,” Rosen said, “feelings fulfilled, feelings seen by someone who doesn’t know you, having your experiences feel validated by someone else’s art.”
Poetry classes with Pedersen “challenged me to work away from rhyming, and exposed me to different styles of poetry,” Rosen said. “I was reluctant to expand. And Mike Dittman met with me a couple of times to go over some of my poems, and that challenged me because I wanted to be impressive to people who had been in the field for a long time.
“I think having access to someone who cared enough to make time for me in my art really pushed me to expand.”
“She really makes the words jump off the page”
Rosen, 28, of Worthington, is a 2012 graduate of the former Kittanning Area High School.
“Cherries,” Rosen said, is about the fluidity of sexuality; “Anchor,” about the expiration of teenage friendships; and “The Ides of Endometriosis,” about the chronic pain associated with an invisible illness.
She has participated in poetry readings elsewhere on BC3’s main campus and at the Butler Art Center, and in open-mic sessions in Pittsburgh.
“She’s a really, really good writer,” said Dittman, a member of the Writers Association of Northern Appalachia, adviser of the college’s writers club and the author of “Small Brutal Incidents,” “Masterpieces of Beat Literature” and “Jack Kerouac: A Biography.” His books have been published by Contemporary Press and by Greenwood.
Rosen was selected for the public reading after a review of a number of poets, Dittman said.
“She’s an alumna and a young voice, which is really nice to get,” Dittman said. “She’s also a phenomenal reader. When I teach performance in my creative writing course, we watch videos of a lot of different poets, but hers is one I always show the class. She has a really powerful and unique style that people are going to love to see.
“She really makes the words jump off the page.”
Words that began MAYBE I’LL BE A POET INSTEAD on a page nearly perforated 20 years ago within her great-aunt Martha’s gift journal.
“That day I realized I couldn’t draw and I couldn’t dance or play sports because,” Rosen said, “there was some movement I was making towards only being able to articulate with words.”
The open-mic session begins at 5:30 p.m. Visitors can reserve a spot the evening of the event or contact Dittman at mike.dittman@bc3.edu or (724) 287-8711 Ext. 8251.
BC3 plans to host a third Northern Appalachia Reading Series event at the Heaton Family Learning Commons in the fall.