BINGHAMTON, NY – Approximately 400 students from 34 schools and 12 school districts will meet at 10 a.m. Wednesday, May 21, in the Osterhout Concert Theater of the Anderson Center at Binghamton University for the 37th Annual Poetry and the Children Day. After the opening presentation, students will present their poems at 11 a.m. throughout the Fine Arts Building.

This year’s guest poet is Joe E. Weil, who teaches poetry as an assistant professor at Binghamton University and is the recipient of the 2013 people's poetry prize from Partisan Press. His latest book, The Great Grandmother Light (New York Quarterly Books), was selected as one of the top 13 books of 2013 by the noted poet Sean Thomas Dougherty. Weil received his 10th Pushcart Prize nomination this spring and his collaborative book with the poet Emily Vogel, West of Home, is being produced as a one-act play Off-Broadway.

Weil's poems, stories, essays and reviews appear in such noteworthy literary magazines and newspapers as the Boston Review, New York Times and The Best American Poetry. Before coming to Binghamton, he taught at a school for the gifted and talented and was named an outstanding teacher in the arts twice by the National Young Arts Foundation. He also founded a summer program for middle- and high-school students, and has been featured on PBS and NPR. Weil is currently editor of the poetry journal, MAGGY; fiction editor of Ragazine; and the publisher/founder of Cat in The Sun books.

The program, which brings students together for a day of poetry readings, was established as a memorial to Robert Pawlikowski. A published poet, creative writing instructor and campus administrative assistant, Pawlikowski drowned in 1975 while on vacation with his family. The event is a tribute to the efforts that Pawlikowski made during his lifetime in nurturing the expressive and intellectual powers of his students as well as those of his own children.