Frequency North Welcomes Kaya Oakes and David Yezzi

By ALEXANDRA KORCZ

Contributing Writer

This Social Justice Week author Kaya Oakes and poet David Yezzi will be joining the list of talented authors and performers to visit the College of Saint Rose’s Frequency North readers’ series.

Oakes will be reading from her most recent book, Radical Reinvention: An Unlikely Return to the Catholic Church. “Her most recent book, as someone who grew up Catholic, is really interesting and personal to me; it’s about her return to her Catholic faith, and how she integrates that with her interest in social justice and lefty politics,” says Daniel Nester, Frequency North founder and Associate Professor at the College of Saint Rose.

Oakes looks forward reading during Social Justice Week. “Socioeconomic, racial, gender, and equality for LGBTQ people are the things I’ll go down fighting for. To me, social justice is simply about giving everyone an equal footing,” says Oakes.

Like Oakes, Yezzi is celebrating the release of his most recent book, Birds of the Air, and will be reading different poems from the different poetry collections that he has written throughout the years. Yezzi teaches performance classes for poets and believes that poetry isn’t “alive” until it is spoken out loud. “His poetry is both formal and slangy, which is harder to do than one might think. He is eloquent when he speaks about his work, and he’s also accessible,” says Nester. Yezzi’s Birds of the Air is his first book to feature four monologue style poems.

Yezzi is a Guilderland native and  Doane Stuart graduate. It was at Doane Stuart where Yezzi met Father Christopher DeGiovine, Dean of Spiritual Life at the College of Saint Rose. “He is an important part of my life both personally and spiritually. He has been a friend and a mentor since I was a child,” says Yezzi of DeGiovine.

Frequency North was founded in 2006 by Nester after he noticed the lack of readers series in the Capital Region.  Nester had experience with a previous readers series in Manhattan called Frequency. Albany is north of Manhattan, and so Frequency North seemed like the perfect name for the new program.

“It’s meant to be for both book nerds and people from the community,” says Nester. In previous years, Frequency North has hosted slam poets, memoir writers, novelists, social activists, graphic novelists, comedians, storytellers, and game show hosts. Frequency North is free and open to the community. Frequency North is also proud to host Darrin Strauss and Michael Meyerhoffer March 28^th  at 7:30, Pitchapalooza April 7^th at 2pm, and Meg Kearney and M. Bartley Seigel April 11^th at 7:30.

The first Frequency North of the semester will be the Thursday of Social Justice Week, on Thursday, March 21^st at 7:30 in the Hubbard Interfaith Sanctuary, 959 Madison Ave, Albany.