Poet Matt Mason of the Omaha Slam Team, a nationally recognized slam poetry troupe, will perform at Morningside College on Wednesday, March 28, at 7:30 p.m. in the UPS Auditorium of the Lincoln Center, 3627 Peters Avenue.

The free event is sponsored by Morningside’s Academic and Cultural Arts Series (ACAS) and the Sioux City Readings Series. The public is invited.

Mason has read and performed his poetry across the country including such venues as the Nebraska Book Festival, the National Slam Poetry competition, and at poetry slam competitions in Nebraska, Iowa, New Mexico, and Illinois. His work has been published in more than 100 magazines and anthologies including Prairie Schooner, The Laurel Review, Poet Lore, and Mississippi Review, to name a few. He served as co-editor of “Slamma Lamma Ding Dong: An Anthology of Nebraska's Slam Poets” which won the 2006 Nebraska Book Award for Best Anthology. His first full-length collection “Things We Don't Know We Don't Know,” released in 2006 by The Backwaters Press, debuted at number 12 on the Poetry Foundation’s best seller list for contemporary poetry.

Mason is the founder of Morpo Press, which has published 25 chapbooks by writers from the region. He also serves as editor of PoetryMenu.com, a Web site listing poetry events across the state of Nebraska, and runs the monthly poetry slam and open mic events at the Omaha Healing Arts Center in Omaha, Neb. Mason holds a master’s degree in creative writing from the University of California at Davis.

Slam poetry is an art form that combines elements of poetry recitation and the performing arts and emphasizing audience involvement.