In honor of National Poetry Month we invite you to a special evening filled with art, music, and poetry.
Enjoy wine and cheese while perusing the beautiful artwork of local author Vicki Bowden, whose art has been called similar in style to Currier & Ives, and Anna Mary Robertston "Grandma" Moses".
The following talented poets will be reading from their poetry collections. The event will be followed by a group book signing.
Megan Buchanan’s first full-length poetry collection, Clothesline Religion, has just been published by Vermont's Green Writers Press. Her poems have appeared in such as journals as The Sun Magazine, make/shift, A Woman’s Thing, and numerous anthologies. Born in California, she’s lived for long stretches in Ireland, the mountains of the southwest, and New England. Her work has been supported by the Arizona Commission on the Arts, the Vermont Arts Council, and the Vermont Studio Center.Megan is also a collaborative performer and dancemaker, a teacher, and an activist. She currently lives in southern Vermont with her two children. Visit the author’s website at meganbuchanan.net.
James Crews' work has appeared in Ploughshares, Poet Lore, and The New Republic, among other journals, and he is a regular contributor to The (London) Times Literary Supplement. His first collection of poetry, The Book of What Stays, won the 2010 Prairie Schooner Book Prize and a Foreword Magazine Book of the Year Award. His second collection, Telling My Father, won the Cowles Prize and will be published by Southeast Missouri University Press. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing-Poetry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a PhD in Writing and Literature from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where he was an Othmer Fellow and worked for Ted Kooser's American Life in Poetry newspaper column. He lives on an organic farm with his partner in Shaftsbury, Vermont and works as a poetry editor for Green Writers Press and The Hopper, a journal of environmental literature.
Dede Cummings is a writer, literary agent/publisher and commentator for Vermont Public Radio. At Middlebury College, she was the recipient of the Mary Dunning Thwing Award, attended the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference as an undergraduate fellow, and studied with Hayden Carruth at the Bennington Writers’ Workshop. In 2013, she returned as a poetry contributor to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference to work on her poetry collection begun in 1978. Her poetry has been published in Mademoiselle, TheLake, InQuire, Vending Machine Press, Kentucky Review, Connotation Press, Mom Egg Review, and Bloodroot Literary Magazine. She was a Discover/The Nation poetry semi-finalist and was awarded a writer’s grant and a partial fellowship from the Vermont Studio Center. Her poetry collection, entitled To Look Out From, was the winner of the 2016 Homebound Publications Poetry Prize.
Terry Linda Hau
ptman is the author of three previous poetry collections: Masquerading in Clover: Fantasy of the Leafy Fool (Boston:Four Zoas,1980), Rattle (Tulsa:Cardinal Press, 1982), and On Hearing Thunder (St.Cloud Minnesota: North Star Press of St. Cloud,Inc.,2004). She has a Master's degree in Poetry from the University of New Mexico,Albuquerque, and a Ph.D. in Interdiscirplinary Arts from Ohio University, Athens. She reads her poetry rhapsodically and exhibits her luminous Songline Scrolls nationally.She has taught World Art, Poetry and Ethnopoetics, as well as classes in Genocide at several universities and workshops. She lives in Vermont with Robert and Kira.
Claire North is a member of the Gossamer Stone Poets, a poetry writing and reading group in Manchester, VT. Her poems appear in the poetry collection Border Lines. She is active in planning poetry events as well as taking part in them, both in VT and in Rensselaerville, NY. Claire holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College, where she never missed an opportunity to commune with poets and poetry when she could play hooky from long fiction. She is a Mentor for Young Writers Day/MindsOn, and believes poetry is the universal language we all share.
Mary Scriber is a poet who lives in Manchester, Vermont. He book "Border Lines a poetry collection" is a collaboration with fellow poets known as the Gossamer Stone Poets. She has a creative writing degree from Skidmore College. While at Skidmore she did a concentration in poetry study with internationally acclaimed poet, Carolyn Forche. In 2016 and 2017 her poetry was chosen for exhibition in April's National Poetry Month event, "Poem City" in Montpelier, Vt. as well as the "Downtown Poetry" event in Poultney, Vt. She has exhibited her poetry at the Southern Vermont Art Center in Manchester,Vt. Her poetry is currently on display in the show "Vision and Voice" at the Canfield Library Art Gallery in Arlington, Vt.
Charles Rossiter, NEA Fellowship recipient and five-time Pushcart Prize nominee, hosts the podcast series at www.PoetrySpokenHere.com. He's been featured on NPR, at the Dodge Poetry Festival in NJ, the Nuyorican Cafe and the Chicago Blues Festival. He has performed around the country as part of the performance poetry groups 3 Guys from Albany and AvantRetro. His column "Waxing Poetic" appears occasionally in the Bennington Banner. This is his first public reading since relocating to Bennington in 2016.
Joyce Thomas is a Professor of English at Castleton University, Vermont, She teaches courses in world and children’s literature; she is the author of one non-fiction work, Inside the Wolf’s Belly: Aspects of the Fairy Tale (Sheffield Academic Press, England), and two collections of poetry: Skins (Fithian Press) and Washing Birds (Main Street Rag Publishing Co.). Her poetry has appeared in various small press magazines and journals, as well as anthologies, including Birchsong: Poetry Centered in Vermont, eds. Gilborn, Hunter, Cone, Nicholson and Stillman (The Blueline Press); The Poets’ Grimm: 20th Century Poems from Grimm Fairy Tales, eds. Jeanne Marie Beaumont and Claudia Carlson (Story Line Press); and Orpheus and Company: Contemporary Poems on Greek Mythology, ed. Deborah DeNicola (University Press of New England). Poetry awards include the James Hearst Poetry Prize (North American Review).
Reflections on Change
by Marshall Witten
Sepia Ink Drawings by Elaine Witten
Photographs by Amie Witten Smith and Marshall Witten
"I enjoy the creative process and love writing poetry. I am of an age when I can “no longer don the youthful disregard of death,” to quote one of my poems. My age gives me a perspective to write poems I could not have contemplated 20 years ago. My writing is informed by my background. I practiced law 55 years, and am now retired, leaving me time to devote to creative writing. I’ve been a state legislator and served on local, state, and national public service boards most of my adult life.
For inspiration, I take long walks every morning on our quiet rural dirt roads, practice yoga, and meditate. I have traveled extensively in North and South America and western Europe, have camped, hiked, fished, hunted, skied, sailed, and hold a commercial pilots license. I love classical music (I’ve studied Bach on the piano), theater, photography and other visual arts. I’ve been married for 59 years to a wonderful supportive woman, whose talent in the visual arts has always stunned and mystified me."
