Newton - The Betty June Silconas Poetry Center at Sussex County Community College will present a free workshop led by BJ Ward from 10:30 a.m. to noon on Saturday, June 17. The workshop, titled, “Feeling Around in the Dark: Exploring Internal Spaces,” will be followed by an open poetry reading beginning at 1 p.m. Lunch will be provided for all workshop participants. Ward’s third book of poetry, Gravedigger’s Birthday, was a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize. His two earlier volumes are 17 Love Poems with No Despair and Landing in New Jersey with Soft Hands. All three volumes are published by North Atlantic Books (Berkeley, CA). Ward is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize for poetry and two Distinguished Artist fellowships from the N.J. State Council on the Arts. His poetry has been featured on National Public Radio, N.J. Network’s “State of the Arts,” and Poetry Daily, as well as in publications, including TriQuarterly, Poetry, Painted Bride Quarterly, Puerto Del Sol, Mid-American Review, The Sun, and other journals. His essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Worcester Review, and Teaching Artist Journal. Anthologies that appeared in 2005 which feature his work include The Poets of New Jersey (Jersey Shore Publications), In A Fine Frenzy: Poets Respond to Shakespeare (University of Iowa Press), and The Breath of Parted Lips II: Voices from the Frost Place (CavanKerry Books). In 2002, one of his poems, For the Children of the World Trade Center Victims, was cast in bronze and acquired as part of the permanent collection at Grounds for Sculpture, an outdoor sculpture museum in Hamilton. Ward has received fellowships from the Dodge Foundation and the Artists/Teachers Institute, and served as University Distinguished Fellow at Syracuse University. He is an assistant professor of English at Warren County Community College. He has been named Teaching Artist of the Year by Playwrights Theatre for his work in the N.J. Writers Project, and he has received the N.J. Governor’s Award in Arts Education. He lives on a bank of the Musconetcong River in Changewater. The workshop has limited seating and will be on a first come, first served basis. To enroll, call 973-300-2194. The Betty June Silconas Poetry Center is in the library on the campus of Sussex County Community College, located at One College Hill Rd. in Newton.