Barnes and Noble, 2439 Sycamore Road, will celebrate National Poetry Month with local poet, Susan Azar Porterfield, Thursday evening.

From 7 to 9 p.m., students are invited to attend the reading and to participate in an open mic reading session.

Barnes and Noble would like to create a venue for students interested in reading their work in front of an audience, said department manager Angie Krausfeldt.

“If we get a good crowd Thursday evening, it’s something we would like to do once a month,” she said.

Porterfield will read from her new collection of poems “In the Garden of Our Spines.” She said her work is in free verse form and is about her own life and life in DeKalb. She will also be available to answer any questions and sign books after the reading.

A DeKalb resident, Porterfield received a doctorate degree in English from NIU and teaches poetry writing at Rockford College.

Porterfield’s advice to aspiring poets is to live fully and read poetry.

“You can’t become a musician without ever having listened to music, and you can’t become a visual artist with having looked at art,” Porterfield said.

Students should read poetry in order to understand the field, she said.

Students interested in participating in the open mic session Thursday evening should sign up by calling Barnes and Noble at 815-787-3234.