Professor Kenneth Pobo Releases Two New Books of Poetry

Dr. Kenneth Pobo, professor of English and creative writing and co-chair of the creative writing department at Widener University, has released two new books of poetry this year: “Dindi Expecting Snow” and “The Antlantis Hit Parade.”

“Dindi Expecting Snow” is a collection of poems about Dindi, whose name is pronounced ‘Jin-jee’ and comes from the bossa nova style of Brazilian music popularized in the 1950s and 1960s. Dindi grows up in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in a family and extended family of Brazilian immigrants.

“Dindi defines what it means to be an American,” Pobo said. “The poems show her reckoning with her cultural heritage while truly embracing American culture. Her American experience includes shopping malls, food courts, theme parks, smoky bars, greasy diners, television classics, musical icons, and snowy cemeteries.”

This book was published by Duck Lake Books of Ocean Shore, Washington and is available for purchase online.

“The Antlantis Hit Parade” is a collection of prose poems described by the publisher as a work that “entices you into its nostalgic world from the first page.” This collection features unique personalities, perhaps generations of family or the inhabitants of a small town beset by the vagaries of love, loneliness, and growing older.

This book was published by Clare Songbirds Publishing House of Auburn, New York and is available for purchase online.

In 2018, Pobo also published an online-only chapbook, “Threads,” a selection of 15 micropoems that invite the reader to explore such themes as nature, death, love, and surviving in an ever-changing world. It was published with Yavanika Press of Bangalore, India.

Throughout his career, Pobo, a Middletown resident, has published more than nine full-length collections and 28 chapbooks of poetry in addition to countless poems and flash fiction pieces in literary journals and magazines. This summer, he won a contest sponsored by the Poetry Society of Alabama for a chapbook of poems called “Your Place or Mine.”

Pobo earned his bachelor’s degree in English from Wheaton College and his master’s and doctorate degrees in English and creative writing from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He joined the Widener faculty in 1987.