On Monday, the Master of Fine Arts program will host a poetry reading by Hal Sirowitz and Dennis Nurkse, the poet laureates of Queens and Brooklyn respectively.

The reading is in conjunction with the poets' visit to Penn State to take part in the English department's "Writer in the Community" project. The reading, which is sponsored by the Mary Rolling Fund and the English Department, will be held at 8 p.m. in 102 Thomas Building.

Sirowitz has been a special education teacher in New York City public schools for 20 years. He is the author of five books of poetry, including Mother Said, which is the best-selling translated book of poetry in Norway, where he has become a sort of cult hero. In Norway his book has been adapted for the stage and turned into a children's cartoon. He has performed on MTV and is a National Poetry Slam champion.

His style of poetry is non-traditional, in that instead of a reading his appearance is more of a performance. The poet, whose work has been compared to Woody Allen and Jerry Seinfeld, became Brooklyn's poet laureate this year.

Nurkse is a two-time recipient of National Endowment for the Arts fellowships in poetry and the author of five books of poetry. He has also written poems that will be appearing in The New Yorker, The American Poetry Review and The Kenyon Review. He currently works as a poetry teacher at Riker's Island prison where he works on taking poetry outside the academic box.

His position as poet laureate of Brooklyn gives him "a chance to do arts advocacy for inner city areas, which have lost arts funding in the past 20 years," he said in an e-mail message.

As opposed to Sirowitz, his style is more traditional. The laureate position was awarded to him by a panel of Brooklyn writers.

The "Writer in the Community" course is being taught for the first time this semester to masters students in fiction, non-fiction and poetry. The graduate students are then teaching creative writing at State Correctional Institution at Rockview, the youth center in Bellefonte and retirement communities.

"The reason we are bringing these poets to campus is that they are both fine writers and they also have a deep commitment to public service and they use poetry in public places like schools and prisons," said Julia Kasdorf, director of the Master of Fine Arts program and associate professor of English.

The poets are planning to come to Penn State via train on Sunday and this week's events should not affect their appearance.