Writing is a common bond between two married NIU assistant professors, and tonight they will present their work together for the first time.

The Junction Book Store, 822 W. Lincoln Highway, hosts an 8 p.m. poetry reading featuring assistant English professors Amy Newman and Joe Bonomo. It’s part a month-long series celebrating National Poetry Month.

Newman will read poems from her books “Order, or Disorder” and “Camera Lyrica.” She describes the former as “language’s attempt to apprehend the world because the world is three-dimensional and language is linear.”

“Camera Lyrica” takes that concept to a higher level and explores it in realism and naturalism, Newman’s “pet subjects,” she said.

Her husband, Bonomo, a visiting assistant professor, also will read from his writing collection. He writes poetry, but also has written essays for the past eight years.

Bonomo said memory is the focus of his manuscript “Selves-Portrait: Essays on Memory and Transparent Places.”

“I have an interest in memory and how it operates, how we remember our past, how we shape it and how much of our past is fiction,” Bonomo said.

Newman and Bonomo met at graduate school at Ohio University, where they both studied poetry. They came to NIU together in 1995 and will celebrate their second wedding anniversary in December.

Newman tells her students that poetry is like creating a landscape — and sometimes is more about beauty than its message.

“I’ve only been writing poetry since I was reading poetry,” she said. “Until you read poetry, you’re really not writing poetry.”

Bonomo has his own suggestions for his students when they write essays.

“Write about what haunts you,” Bonomo said. “Ask why that story still lingers in you.”

The couple commend each other as excellent poets and readers.

“I don’t think I would have a single poem or book published if it weren’t for Joe,” Newman said. “He tells me what’s working and what’s not.”

Bonomo added that he and his wife don’t show each other their work until they’re pretty sure they’ve got something good. He’s working on a biography for next year that will capture the story of a New York City garage-rock band named Fleshtones.

Newman recently saw her poems published on a woman’s magazine Web site, www.nerve.com, and will read at a California lecture on poetry and painting.

Tonight’s readings are free to the public, and Newman and Bonomo’s books are on sale at the store.