Guilford Poets Guild

Poets and artists alike have been “Keeping On” during the pandemic. Proof can be seen at the Guilford Art Center’s Faculty Exhibit and its accompanying series of poems written by members of the Guilford Poets Guild — both on view through the month of March. The exhibit and poems share how GAC instructors and GPG poets have engaged with their creativity to help them “keep on” during this time of the pandemic.

This is the fourth ekphrastic collaboration between the Guilford Poets Guild and Guilford Art Center, usually culminating in a reading at the Center. This year’s event is virtual, with poems appearing on both organization’s websites throughout the month.

Ekphrastic poetry is a response to a visual work of art, often a vivid, dramatic work that takes a painting, sculpture, or other artwork as its inspiration. With the GAC Gallery reopening, many GPG poets were able to view the artwork in person, while others visited the gallery virtually via photos and a walk-through video available on the GAC Facebook page.

If you can, be sure to visit the “Keeping On” Faculty Exhibit yourself. The gallery is free and open to the community Wednesday – Friday, 12:00-4:00pm and Saturdays 10:00 am-4:00pm. Mask wearing and social distancing is required upon entry. If you are more comfortable at home, please visit www.guilfordartcenter.org and www.guilfordpoetsguild.org to see the results of this creative collaboration.

For more information contact Guilford Art Center at www.guilfordartcenter.org or 203-453-5947.

The Guilford Poets Guild is a group of award-winning, published poets from the shoreline who meet regularly to share poems and promote the love and engagement of poetry within the community. Throughout the year the GPG hosts a number of poetry readings including its popular Second Thursday Poetry Series, a Holiday Roundtable, the Guilford High School Poetry Contest, and coordinates poetry/art events with Guilford Art Center, the Madison Art Society and the Florence Griswold Museum. The Guild recently celebrated its 20th anniversary with the publication of its third anthology of poems, Our Changing Environment. The book is available for purchase online at http://www.guilfordpoetsguild.org and from Breakwater Books in Guilford.

Dear Fellow Poetry Lover:

Despite hunkering down this past year, the Guilford Poets Guild has been busy. While we had to cancel our regular poetry readings at the Guilford Library last spring because of the pandemic, we were able to resume them via Zoom in the fall with readings by Priscilla Ellsworth, Charles Rafferty, and Ginny Lowe Connors. We hosted a virtual Holiday Roundtable reading in December, and we are currently working with Guilford High School to coordinate an event with student poets this spring.

In 2019, we published the 20th Anniversary Anthology, our third anthology of shoreline poets. The theme was “Our Changing Environment”—although none of the poems considered a pandemic. Copies of the anthology are available at Breakwater Books, the Guilford Art Center, and here on our website.

Our website also includes books published by our members, videos of poetry readings, upcoming events, and news items. During the pandemic, the site featured “Poems in a Pandemic,” “Ekphrastic May: Poems from Home,” and a series of poet interviews during National Poetry Month.

And so we press on, meeting twice a month on Zoom to share and polish our work, and making plans for our 2021 Second Thursday Readings starting in the Spring.

We wish you the best in this challenging time and, if you care to contribute, we deeply appreciate your support. Donations can be made by mail or by using the Donate button below

Stay well, stay safe, vaccinations are just around the corner,

Carol Leavitt Altieri, Evelyn Atreya, Gwen Gunn, Juliana Harris, Margaret Iacobellis, Karen Gronback Johnson, Norman Thomas Marshall, Nancy Meneely, Jane Muir, Patricia Horn O’Brien, Sharon Olson, Jen Payne, Elizabeth Possidente, Jane Ulrich, Edward Walker, Gordy Whiteman

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In December, we’re highlighting some of our favorite holiday poems and writings. Sharon Olson writes, “Recently Poetry Magazine published online a poem by W. S. Di Piero. I suspect he is not well known, but he is one of my favorite poets. Because he taught at Stanford near where I lived, I met him a few times and we even exchanged some limited correspondence. Di Piero’s poems often are concerned with the lives of the working class people, like the ones he grew up with in South Philly. His poem “Chicago and December” is a personal meditation of his reactions walking around that city, about the commercialism of the holiday decorations, but more importantly he invokes the change of seasons, marked by the flight of birds.”