Maryland’s 10th poet laureate gave advice to students after sharing passages from a recent release Thursday.

Grace Cavalieri, read from her book “Other Voices, Other Lives.”

The book features tales from women’s history, as well as her personal stories. It includes poems written in the 1990s and 2000s, and was released in 2017.

It also includes three plays and interviews with Pulitzer Prize winning poets from her podcast, “The Poet and The Poem.”

Cavalieri said she would like people to know, “writers are the ones who save the things that are important and … it’s our job to talk about the hard things like love and grief.”

Creative Writing professor Garrett Brown invited her to speak on campus.

Ashley Adair, a second-year general studies student, attended the event for Brown’s creative writing class.

Adair said she thought it was very informative.

“I really enjoyed it,” Adair said.

Adair said she enjoyed listening to the questions asked by those in attendance and the answers given.
Joshua Saderholm, a second-year creative writing student, said he found the event eye opening.

“She brought up a lot of things that I’ve always thought about before but I’ve never thought to inspect more deeply,” Saderholm said. “She shined a lot of light on things that I’ve never looked up to carefully before.”

Saderholm added he liked “some of the tips [Cavalieri] gave on how to go about being a writer, like get up and write something every day and keep [your writing] somewhere,” so when going through a dry spell the writer can reread it for inspiration.

“Poetry isn’t nearly as boring as people think it is,” Saderholm said.