Newton - Two of New Jersey’s greatest claims to fame in the current poetry world, Jim Haba and Joe Weil, will present their work as part of The Idiom Reading Series at Sussex County Community College. The poetry reading is sponsored by the Betty June Silconas Poetry Center at SCCC and will take place from 7 to 9 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 3. The Betty June Silconas Poetry Center is located in the Library at Sussex County Community College. Jim Haba grew up on farms and islands in rural Washington state. He earned degrees from Reed College and Cornell University before teaching for three decades in New Jersey universities. Since 1986 he has designed and produced all ten biennial Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festivals and directed the Dodge Poetry-in-the-Schools Program. He studied drawing and sculpture in New York City before beginning to write poems more than thirty years ago. He continues to work as a visual artist constructing collages and with his wife, Erica Barton Haba, designing and producing ceramic tile murals. Joe Weil is a native of Elizabeth, a place much celebrated in his poetry collections Ode to Elizabeth, The Pursuit of Happiness, In Praise We Enter, and A Portable Winter. A former tool-and-die maker and shop steward, he has shared stages with Allen Ginsberg and Philip Levine, has been a winner in the famous poetry slam at the Nuyorican Cafe, and was featured in the public television series Fooling with Words with Bill Moyers. Gifted in music as well as poetry, Joe Weil has recently begun an appointment as Lecturer in English at Binghamton University, N.Y. The poetry reading is free and the public is welcome to attend. There will be an open reading following the featured poets. For more information, contact Bob Carnevale at 973-300-2139.