Today in the roundup: DMA hires a curator, the ghost of Frank Zappa visits UNT and a very special DIFF screening you should know about.

It was going to be only a week of events to mark April as Jazz Appreciation Month — that’s all they could probably muster. But D’JAM put together a real, live calendar-month of stuff, and to start it off, they set out to recreate a legendary photo shoot.

A herd of brightly-colored dancing horses shocked students Thursday at the University of North Texas. But the event may have been a surprise, but it wasn’t spontaneous. Instead, it took a famous artist, hundreds of students and months of planning to pull off.

A new chair, an old mural and a busload of books — quite the interesting roundup for this Friday morning.

The prizes are piling up for Space in Chains. And burdened by them all, author Laura Kasischke will be coming to town next month.

Last August, UNT announced it was creating an annual poetry prize worth ten grand. The Rilke Prize is to be awarded to a ‘mid-career poet’ who’s written a work the past year of “exceptional artistry.” And now they’ve found one.

One is going to San Francisco Opera for a year’s residence, the other won a cash prize and recitals in London and Mexico City.

Seven universities in Texas are shooting for Tier One status — and the state funding goodies that it’ll provide. Mostly, the competition is in high-cost research and increasing endowments. But there are other ways to upgrade – like in creative writing.

The University of North Texas just made poetry-writing a smidgen more financially rewarding in America. The Rilke Prize comes with $10,000 — for a book of poetry of “exceptional artistry” by a writer who already has at least two books in print.

First profiled on Art&Seek, author and UNT teacher Miroslav Penkov is now on NPR. His debut book is a bittersweet, slightly magical history of his native Bulgaria, complete with cross thieves, tragic lovers and a young man who buys the corpse of Lenin on eBay.