The Guilford Poets Guild’s Second Thursday Poetry Reading welcomes poet Charles Rafferty. The reading will take place via Zoom on Thursday, October 8 at 7PM, hosted by the Guilford Free Library.
Rafferty’s most recent collections of poems are The Smoke of Horses (BOA Editions, 2017), Something an Atheist Might Bring Up at a Cocktail Party (Mayapple Press, 2018), and The Problem With Abundance (Grayson Books, 2019). His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, O, Oprah Magazine, Prairie Schooner, and Ploughshares. His stories have appeared in The Southern Review and New World Writing, and his story collection is Saturday Night at Magellan’s (Fomite Press, 2013). He has won grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism, as well as the 2016 NANO Fiction Prize. Currently, he directs the MFA program at Albertus Magnus College and teaches at the Westport Writers’ Workshop.
The event is free and open to the public, but registration is required.
Guilford Poets Guild member Nan Meneely recently completed work on lyrics for the album I Sang My Heart to the Moon, composed by Austrian composer Oliver Ostermann, and sung by Brian Cheney and Johanna Ostermann.
Colin Clarke at Fanfare Magazine writes: “At a time of pandemic, perhaps we need some music that might have come from the musicals to soothe us, and that is exactly what Austrian composer Oliver Ostermann provides in his new album, I Sang My Heart to the Moon—eight songs to calm the soul, to provide solace….The titles tell the story, of course: Love Apart (separation), The Moon (a lonely instrumental), I Sang My Heart to the Moon (a song of pining), The Stars (another instrumental). Perhaps most poignantly, there is I Need a Song; we all need music, as the present situation has surely proved. This song, with its wit and charm, is a winner.”
He goes on to say that “The lyrics, by Nancy Fitz-Hugh Meneely, constitute beautiful poetry in and of themselves.”
You can read the full review here, but even better is to listen to some FREE samples of the the music! Click here.
The Guilford Poets Guild is hitting PLAY after pausing its Second Thursday Poetry Readings for the past several months. Their first featured poet, Priscilla Ellsworth, will read selected poems via Zoom on Thursday, September 10 at 7PM. The event will be hosted by the Guilford Free Library.
Ellsworth is the author of three poetry collections, and her poems have twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She is a resident of Salisbury, CT and her work has appeared in Cape Rock, Connecticut River Review, Whetstone, and Nimrod. She has been the featured poet in the Connecticut Poets Corner of the Hartford Courant.
The event is free and open to the public. We look forward to “seeing” you!
In the spirit of its long running (though temporarily paused) open mic and featured reader series at the Institute Library in New Haven, Pi, The Poetry Institute, offers Circumference zine, an Online Poetry Journal.
Editors Gemma Mathewson and Mark McGuire-Schwartz explain: “We hope it reflects the spirit of our celebration of poetry from a dedicated, diverse and ever expanding circle of poets who share their morsels of truth, nuggets of beauty and small magic. We have been honored to bring these works into the virtual light, and we hope you find in them, at this time, some small measure of welcome illumination.”
The Guilford Poets Guild is well represented in the first issue by members Juliana Harris, Nan Meneely, and Patricia Horn O’Brien.
• You can view Circumference by clicking on this link to the Pi Website.
• You can view the Circumference PDF here
Guilford Poets Guild member and Guilford’s Poet Laureate Gordy Whiteman was recently featured in the Hartford Courant‘s Poets Corner.
“The thing about poetry,” Whiteman says, is that it gets “the whole novel, the whole history, biography, love story on one page, and I get the answers I didn’t even know I was looking for.” He says poetry helps him think things out and that he often finds himself mentally conversing with a poet as he reads a poem. “You want a five-star evening? Read a book of poetry.”
The body of a young woman is found brutally beaten in the woods behind the Medad Stone Tavern, and the murder weapon turns out to be the walking stick of 73-year-old Ashley Hamilton Reynolds. “Squire,” as he is fondly known around his hometown, is the scion of one of Guilford’s oldest and most reputable families. He claims his walking stick had gone missing a few days before the murder. But how can this be proved? And, if he is innocent, who is the real killer?
Find out in the new book by GPG member Juliana Harris, MURDER AT THE TAVERN: A GUILFORD MYSTERY. ($15) Click here to order from Julie.
Juliana is also participating in the AARP Superstar 2020 Contest. Check out her entry here, then check back on August 6 to see if she makes it to the Finals! Good luck Julie!
Poet Gwen Gunn says “I am in the process of writing the dialogue to an operatic musical by Hillarie Clark Moore, based on the award-winning romantic novel Tregaron’s Daughter by Madeleine Brent.
Guild member Jen Payne recently published the first issue of MANIFEST (zine), part artist book, part poetry chapbook. It’s a hold-in-your-hands art installation featuring her writing, mixed-media collage work, photography, quotes, and bits and pieces of whatnot that rise to the surface as she meditates on a theme. Layered with colors, textures, and meanings, each issue is handmade then color-copied, embellished, and intricately folded. The result is a thought-full, tactile journey with nooks and crannies for you to discover along the way. Click here to read more about Manifest (zine) and the first issue, DIVINE INTERVENTION, available for $5.00.
Poet Sharon Olson reports that she read recently as one of two featured readers for Poetry Center San José’s Well-RED reading series (June 9), and her poem “That Day” was featured on Verse Daily (July 12).
GPG Poet Nan Meneely’s new book, SIMPLE ABSENCE, has been nominated for the National Book Award. Click here to purchase a copy from Amazon.
One of poetry’s dreams is amplitude, the book of poems that gives a sense of life’s fullness, even as it depicts the losses. Nancy Meneely’s SIMPLE ABSENCE speaks eloquently to that dream, the range of poems honoring and testifying to a host of situations—public and private. Each poem deftly enacts the drama of trammeled and untrammeled emotion. Though the poems embody essences of form and feeling, lines and stanzas moving crisply down the pages, there is nothing minimal here. The breadth and depth are both inspiring. – Baron Wormser
Nan Meneely’s SIMPLE ABSENCE, refers, I assume, to the poet’s absence of authorial ego, since there’s nothing else absent in these richly-textured, various-structured, deeply-felt and capacious poems (plus a few prose pieces). Great pleasure is to be garnered from Meneely’s powers of description; precise, wholly new, better than anyone’s I know. Wonder is to be had, as well, in the particular objects, observations, ideas and emotions this poet chooses to treat as subjects: idiosyncratic in the best sense. From first thought to last, the reader’s ride is electric and ultimately bedazzling. I want to pour Meneely’s poems into my bathtub and soak in them, or mix them up in my juicer and drink them: I want to have written them. – Gray Jacobik
The stunning front cover is Griswold Point December, by Scott Kahn.
Poet Pat O’Brien shared this recent poem, along with a judge’s fabulous critique.
And Almost Home
He’d only just added
three French phrases,
one algebraic formula, ease
with his locker key.
He’d elbowed
his buddy in the hall.
Daydreamed
the night into being,
his favorite
Hey, cute thing!
just before maple leaves
garlanded the spikes
of his perfect hair, his sweet/
smart-ass smile no guard
against the descent
of the undermined tree,
the wind with its last lesson.
– – – – –
A 16-year-old boy has died after being struck by a tree near Clayton Heights Secondary. At 2:24 p.m. Friday, emergency crews were called to a wooded area by the school, at 6965 188 St. They found the boy in serious condition after being struck by a tree, which toppled during a wind storm. Firefighters initiated “first responder protocols” according to Deputy Surrey Fire Chief Larry Thomas. Fire crews continued medical assistance on route to hospital. However, the boy succumbed to his injuries once he had arrived at the hospital. Surrey School District spokesperson Doug Strachan said Friday the final bell had gone and kids were heading home. They had been warned to stay away from treed areas because of the high winds. Strachan said extra counseling would be available to kids when they return to school on Monday and that the school’s website would be updated with pertinent information. Fire crews were incredibly busy on Friday as winds and rains took down trees, which in turn knocked out power. More than 12,000 homes were without power in the Surrey area on Friday afternoon.
– – – – –
About your poem, “And Almost Home,” Mr. Zdanys notes: This is a powerful and yet low key build-up to a moment of crisis and loss, the ripples of action in this lyric moment standing outside of time and bringing us up to and into the moment of time named in the epigraph. The poet works backwards in this poem, in a kind of brisk countdown, to those closing moments of a life, based on an account in a newspaper. The sense of standing outside of time and yet being engulfed in time is what gives lyric poetry its defining authority, and the poet manages that clearly and well here. The recurring use of the long “e” sound sends a jarring aural message, an expression of surprise and pain, throughout the poem. It is a long sound, not a quick one, and therefore it is a counterpoint and a background noise to the fast and unexpected action of the falling tree and the death of the boy.
Echoes of the natural world and early life on a farm in East Andover, New Hampshire enhance the poetry in HIKING THE RUGGED SHORE, as do the variety of creatures and landscapes always thoughtfully observed by GPG Poet Carol Altieri. Her poems criss-cross the planet, interwoven with travels in the United States and abroad.
Altieri simultaneously evokes the strong emotions that followed the untimely losses of her sisters, daughter, and husband. Gradually, moving from grief to acceptance to appreciation, she inspires the reader to consider the pendulum that swings between the memories and experiences of family and our engagement with the natural world.
HIKING THE RUGGED SHORE is 132 Pages with 50 Color Photos, $20.00. Available online or from Carol, carolaltieri@comcast.net.
Looking for something new to read?
Check out these books by GPG members:
Part artist book, part chapbook, MANIFEST (zine) is the creation of Guilford Poets Guild member Jen Payne. Consider it a hold-in-your-hands art installation featuring Jen’s writing and mixed-media collage work, along with photography, quotes, and bits and pieces of whatnot that rise to the surface as she meditates on a theme.
Layered with colors, textures, and meanings, each issue is handmade then color-copied, embellished, and intricately folded. The result is a thought-full, tactile journey with nooks and crannies for you to discover along the way.
Issue #1, DIVINE INTERVENTION asks the reader to consider the catalysts and consequences of Change: What are the forces that move us? Change us? Propel us with such acceleration that we hardly recognize ourselves?
Spring is oblivious to human difficulties,
Why should she care about our cares,
Forsythia and Daffodils usually bloom
Their sunny yellow smiles.
But this year, the Forsythia bloomed …….And she was sad,
Not the sunny yellow of yesteryears,
Even the Daffodils seemed
Not to smile, but bowed their heads.
We mask our sadness, our boredom,
Our restlessness, our loneliness.
Eyes meet eyes, but not our grins.
We live in the large, the unfathomable,
The pinwheel of the Milky Way,
Our home, vast and mysterious;
Yet, it’s the little things that trip us up,
The unseen, the reshuffled deck,
The unexpected cosmic curveball.
Elemental forces appear, like four
Galloping chariot horses,
Thundering towards us, unwelcome.
Yes, I think it’s time to wash our hands,
Dream of better times, love, care, smile.
it’s as though the judge has banged his gavel
and given you a sentence of home confinement
but he’s locked up the whole bunch….you….him
her….them….it’s like you’re looking at your cellmates
on the first day in the pen and seeing that the
space is not as big as you would like and the others –
that is how you see them at this moment – the others
have taken over the prime spots – the tv – the radio –
the beds – and they are a surly bunch they have
established a routine and who the hell are you suggesting
that they consider your ideas so now it’s a case of how
do you get through this mess – you can say screw the
edict you’re going out on the street and they won’t even
know that it’s you……..you’ll have a mask on and sun glasses
so good luck with that and you’re not sure that you want to
go back to that mad scene where the arguments are
unending and why did you get hooked up with that bunch
in the first place and you can bet that when this is over
you will be so out of here because in truth it really does take
two to tango and you have decided that you have picked
the wrong dance partner and the band is not playing your tune
“Oh, give me land, lots of land
Under starry skies above.
Don’t fence me in.
Let me ride to the wide
open country that I love.
Don’t fence me in… ”
The body of a young woman is found brutally beaten in the woods behind the Medad Stone Tavern, and the murder weapon turns out to be the walking stick of 73-year-old Ashley Hamilton Reynolds. “Squire,” as he is fondly known around his hometown, is the scion of one of Guilford’s oldest and most reputable families. He claims his walking stick had gone missing a few days before the murder. But how can this be proved? And, if he is innocent, who is the real killer?
Poet 
