Ellen Doré Watson in May

The Guilford Poets Guild presents poet Ellen Doré Watson for their Second Thursday Poetry Series event on Thursday, May 9, 7 p.m. at the Greene Art Gallery, 29 Whitfield in Guilford. The reading will be preceded by an open mic from 7 to 7:30 p.m.

Poet and translator Ellen Doré Watson’s fourth and most recent book is Dogged Hearts (Tupelo Press, 2010). Earlier collections include This Sharpening, also from Tupelo, and two from Alice James, We Live in Bodies and Ladder Music, winner of the New England/New York award. Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Tin House, Orion, and The New Yorker. Among her honors are a Rona Jaffe Writers Award, fellowships to the MacDowell Colony and to Yaddo, and a National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowship. Her best-known work of translation is The Alphabet in the Park, by Brazilian Adélia Prado; Ex-Voto, a second Prado book, is forthcoming in 2013. Watson lives in Western Massachusetts, where she directs the Poetry Center at Smith College and serves as poetry and translation editor of The Massachusetts Review. She also teaches in the Drew University Low-Residency MFA Program in Poetry and Translation.

The reading is free and open to the public.  Refreshments are served.  For more information call 453-8836.

This year’s reading by Guilford High School poetry winners, sponsored by the Guilford Poets Guild, will be on Thursday, April 25, at the Greene Art Gallery, 29 Whitfield Street at 7 p.m. Every year in April, National Poetry Month, the Guilford Poets Guild sponsors a poetry contest at the high school. Winners are featured at the Poets Guild monthly reading in April as part of the Guild’s Second Thursday readings–although this year the reading is actually on the fourth Thursday. The first half hour of the readings features an open mike.  All Guild readings are free and open to the public.  Refreshments are served. For more information call 453-8836.

 

 

Marilyn Nelson in March

The Guilford Poets Guild will be presenting poet Marilyn Nelson for their Second Thursday Poetry Series event on Thursday, March 14, 7 p.m. at the Greene Art Gallery, 29 Whitfield in Guilford. The reading will be preceded by an open mic from 7 to 7:30 p.m.

Marilyn Nelson is the author or translator of fourteen books, including The Homeplace (1990) and The Fields of Praise: New and Selected Poems (1997), both of which were finalists for the National Book Award. Her numerous children’s books include, Carver: A Life in Poems (2001 ) which received the Flora Stieglitz Straus Award and the Boston Globe/Horn Book Award. It was also a National Book Award finalist, and was designated as both a Newbery Honor Book and a Coretta Scott King Honor Book. Her young adult book, A Wreath For Emmett Till, also won the 2005 Boston Globe–Horn Book Award and was also designated a 2006 Coretta Scott King Honor Book, a 2006 Michael L. Printz Honor Book, and a 2006 Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award Honor Book.  Her honors include two NEA creative writing fellowships, the 1990 Connecticut Arts Award, an A.C.L.S. Contemplative Practices Fellowship, the Department of the Army’s Commander’s Award for Public Service, and a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Nelson is a professor emerita of English at the University of Connecticut; was founder/director and host of Soul Mountain Retreat, a small non-profit writers’ colony (2004-2010) and held the office of Poet Laureate of the State of Connecticut from 2001-2006. In 2012 she was awarded the Frost Medal—the Poetry Society of America’s most prestigious award, for a “distinguished lifetime achievement in poetry.”

The reading is free and open to the public. Refreshments are served. For more information call 453-8836.

A Meeting of Two Poets

The Country School in Madison, Connecticut has an annual event entitled The Lois MacLane Poetry Recitation. One of the participants chose as his poem to recite a work by our Guild member Jane Muir.  Their online blog told the story of the meeting of these two poets, here is what they said:

Paying Attention: 5th Grader meets his poet. Posted 02/07/2013 10:07AM

Most of the students reciting poems for the Lois MacLane Poetry Recitation will never meet their poets. That’s not the case for one 5th Grader.

When Dan G. was looking for a poem for this year’s annual recitation, The Country School’s oldest tradition, he decided to check out the Guilford Poet’s Guild anthology, and he came across one he particularly liked called “The Zen of Blueberry Picking at Bishop’s” by Jane Muir. Dan contacted Ms. Muir and arranged to meet with her at the Guilford Library, where they talked about poetry and shared a blueberry treat, in keeping with the poem he would be reciting.

In turn, Ms. Muir shared a poem she thought Dan might appreciate. Called “Pay Attention” (and reprinted below), it speaks to the special attributes a poet must possess.

Poets pay attention to the chickadee’s morning song.
No longer the winter call of chick-a-dee-dee-dee-dee
This clear whistle fee-bee announces spring
Poets pay attention to the whispers in the woods
Where secrets are as fleeting as last night’s dream.
Poets pay attention to closed doors,
To remembrance of the lost key
A memory that breeds anxiety.
Poets do not sleepwalk through life.
They are awake to this moment and the next
And to every heartbeat in between.

Dan also invited Ms. Muir to attend the 5th and 6th Grade recitation on Tuesday, and she was in the audience as Dan recited “The Zen of Blueberry Picking at Bishop’s.”

 

Charles Douthat in December

The Guilford Poets Guild presents poet Charles Douthat for their Second Thursday Poetry Series event on Thursday, December 13, 7 p.m. at the Greene Art Gallery, 29 Whitfield in Guilford. The reading will be preceded by an open mic from 7 to 7:30 p.m.

Charles is the author of Blue for Oceans, a debut collection of poetry.   Born in California, he graduated from Stanford University.  For the last thirty years he’s lived in Connecticut where he still practices law.  He began writing poetry during a long mid-life illness.  Since then his poems have been published in many magazines and journals and featured on Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac. Blue for Oceans received the 2011 L.L.Winship/PEN New England Poetry Award for the best book of poetry by a New England author.

The reading is free and open to the public.  Refreshments are served.  For more information call 453-8836.

Jane Muir and Gordy Whiteman in November

The Guilford Poets Guild presents Guild members Jane Muir and Gordy Whiteman for their Second Thursday Poetry Series event on Thursday, November 8, 7 p.m. at the Greene Art Gallery, 29 Whitfield in Guilford. The reading will be preceded by an open mic from 7 to 7:30 p.m.

Jane Muir has been a writer most of her life but a poet in only the last decade. She worked as an advertising copywriter in New York before and after her marriage, during which time she had three nonfiction books published. She has been a journalist and newspaper editor. Her poems have been published in Caduceus and several other journals. She is a member of the Guilford Poets Guild and the Guilford Peace Alliance.

Gordy Whiteman was born in Guilford in 1929. His mother was a song writer and a poet. He is a member and past-chairman of the Guilford Poets Guild. He currently teaches poetry, with other Guild members, at York Women’s Prison in Niantic, CT. His most recent book is Hometown Guilford: New and Selected Poems, published in 2011.  He is also the author of Whitfield Crossing, and has had his poetry published in various anthologies and periodicals. He and his wife, Andrea, live in Guilford surrounded by children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, his brother and three sisters.

The reading is free and open to the public.  Refreshments are served.  For more information call 453-8836

Mark McGuire-Schwartz in October

The Guilford Poets Guild presents poet Mark McGuire-Schwartz for their Second Thursday Poetry Series event on Thursday, October 11, 7 p.m. at the Greene Art Gallery, 29 Whitfield in Guilford. The reading will be preceded by an open mic from 7 to 7:30 p.m.

Mark McGuire-Schwartz sometimes imagines that he was raised by bears, and it shows.  He believes that laughter is a gift to be shared. People often laugh out loud when they read his writings.  Then again, they laugh at a lot of things he does.  In twenty-seven years working as a bureaucrat in state government, Mark strove to raise the level of memos and emails to an art form.

Mark has published poetry and prose in many journals, including Caduceus, Fairfield Review, RogueScholars, Bent Pin Quarterly, Connecticut River Review, 6 Sentences, Whatever Literary Magazine, Connecticut Law Journal, and on the bottoms of rocks.  His first chapbook, Loss and Laughs, Love and Fauna, was published in 2009. Mark is author of a short play, Meeting Arthur Miller, which was produced as part of the Short and NEAT program during the 2004 International Festival of Arts and Ideas.  His latest book is called “289, a book of 17s.”

Mark is the Co-Director of Poetry Institute-New Haven.  Legend has it that he learned to speak in full sentences and to express complex, subtle thoughts at the age of seven months.  However, he still has not been known to do so.

Mark is currently an MFA student at Southern Connecticut State University.  After all these decades of writing, he is now trying to learn how.  For the past few years, he has been developing a new poetic form, called the 17.

The reading is free and open to the public.  Refreshments are served.  For more information call 453-8836.