Poet power couple City College English and creative writing associate professor Chella Courington and writer husband, recite what they love most – poetry.

The Atkinson Gallery will house the couple’s “Intersection of Prose and Poetry” reading today from 7 to 8 p.m. The event, a year in planning, is being followed-up a year after Courington received her Master of Fine Arts degree from New England College in Aug. 2009.

Raised in the northern Appalachian region in Alabama, Courington has come a long way with her work. Her poetic pieces, usually written from women’s perspectives, are submitted and awarded in various online and print magazines, and her blog “Gravity and Light” is ranked in BlogSpot’s Top 100 where her writings may be viewed.

“My favorite poem is the one I haven’t written yet,” said Courington, better known as ‘Doc’ to her English, creative writing and poetry club students.

The event’s delayed scheduled date also recognizes her husband’s, economics Ted Chiles, Pushcart Prize-nominated poem “Recursive Love Affair” and also serves as a book pre-release party for her poetry compilation, “Girls and Women” coming out in spring 2011.

“It couldn’t have come at a better time,” Courington said.

She is set to read approximately 25 minutes of her own prose poetry from her collection including poem “Paper Covers Rock” and other prose pieces, while Chiles is reciting his own flash fiction including “Recursive Love Affair.”

The third element called the ‘In Between’ is the “fusion of fiction and creative nonfiction,” Courington said.

Interconnecting the “traditional narrative arch” of flash fiction that is usually constrained to 1000 words or less and prose poetry’s loose writing structure, the ‘in between’ presents a muddled interpretation of the two genres. Some critics, therefore, will label prose as flash fiction and vice versa. Often times it depends on the literary opinion.

“It shouldn’t matter,” Courington said. “But the perception of the reader and editor becomes the label [of the piece].”

All interested are welcome to the campuswide free reading.