06/17/2022
Ojai Poetry Series: Tuesday June 21, 6 pm, Ojai LIbrary. Featured reader followed by open reading. The featured reader for June is
Joshua Cornwell, a 34 year old poet who received an M.F.A in poetry from UC Irvine in 2014. Josh grew up in Ojai and centers his creation process on the way his poetry sounds read aloud. His pieces are lyrical and essentially narrative in their construction. In late 2019 Josh suddenly manifested symptoms of Susac’s Syndrome, a rare autoimmune disease that targets blood vessels and results in hearing damage, vision loss, and brain swelling. The illness nearly killed him in the first months of 2020, and the most serious period corresponded with the start of the pandemic. Josh is still in recovery and requires monthly infusions to keep his symptoms in check. Half of his recovery period since 2020 was spent in Korea, where he and his son lived with his wife in her hometown. Josh returned to California in April, where he is working on a memoir project about his disease that looks to combine a traditional prose narrative with poetic elements.
