Find any institution of higher learning, and before long, you’ll stumble into a dimly lit, coffee-infused room where threads of poetry are woven through the air.

And being a proper college, it’s time Gainesville State adopted its own night of poetry reading — with or without coffee.

GSC English lecturer Ezekiel Black is bringing that college staple to fruition on Monday night, when two published poets will come to campus to read from their new books. Black will start off the 8:30 p.m. event by reading selections written by his friend Kyle McCord, whose book, “Galley of the Beloved in Torment,” won the 2008 Orphic Prize. Black’s reading will be followed by McCord reading his own work, and then he will be followed by fellow poet Keith Montesano, whose book “Ghost Lights” was a finalist for the 2008 Orphic Prize.
Black said he hopes to make the poetry readings a regular event on the Oakwood campus.

He knew McCord when they were studying for their master’s degrees at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, and they’ve kept in touch since graduation. Both McCord and Montesano have new books published through Dream Horse Press.

Montesano’s book, “Ghost Lights,” is a collection of poems that have been called “ambitious and multi-textured narratives and lyrics,” according to one review, which are “steeped in the lore of cinema and pop culture, and above all seem to dwell in those liminal places where adolescent longing gives way to a hard-bitten and grown-up spirit of elegy.”

McCord’s latest book, “Gallery of the Beloved in Torment,” blends promises, prophecies, laments, lists and directives into prose. Black said his friend’s work has a dark side.

“I did a blurb for the back of his book before it came out,” he explained. “I linked him up with French writers in the 1890s. So it’s a little bit dark, a little bit political, a little surreal.”