Guilford Poets Guild to Read at Scranton Library

Also see article in Shoreline Times April 27, 2017

Guilford High School Poetry Contest Winners to Read

Gray Jacobik on April 13

Poet Gray Jacobik will be featured at the Guilford Poets Guild’s April poetry reading. The reading will be held on Thursday, April 13 at 6:30 p.m. (open mike from 6:30 to 7) at the Guilford Free Library, 67 Park Street, Guilford (203-453-8282).

Gray Jacobik received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in creative writing and an artist’s fellowship from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts. Her poems have won the Yeats Prize, the Emily Dickinson Prize, and the Third Coast Poetry Prize, among others. Jacobik’s collection The Double Task was selected by James Tate for the Juniper Prize and nominated for the James Laughlin Award and the Poet’s Prize. The Surface of Last Scattering received the X. J. Kennedy Poetry Prize, and Brave Disguises received the AWP Poetry Series Award.  She’s served as poet-in-residence at the Frost Place, taught literature at ECSU and mentored graduate students through the Stonecoast MFA Program (Univ. of Southern Maine). Jacobik is the author of Little Boy Blue: A Memoir in Verse (CavanKerry Press) and received the 2016 William Meredith Award in Poetry for The Banquet: New & Selected Poems, which was nominated for both a National Book Award and a Pulitzer. She is a painter as well as a poet. 

Refreshments will be served. See library flyer here.

A Poetry Reading with Sharon Olson

Poet Sharon Olson will be featured at the Guilford Poets Guild’s March poetry reading. The reading will be held on Thursday, March 9 at 6:30 p.m. (open mike from 6:30 to 7) at the Guilford Free Library, 67 Park Street, Guilford (203-453-8282). Olson is a retired librarian, a graduate of Stanford, with an MLS from U.C. Berkeley and an M.A. in Comparative Literature from the University of Oregon. Her book The Long Night of Flying was published by Sixteen Rivers Press in 2006. Her poems have appeared in such journals as Off the Coast, String Poet, Arroyo Literary Review, The Curator, and others. Two of her poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

While living in Guilford, Olson helped direct the publication of the Guilford Poets Guild’s Tenth Anniversary Anthology. She currently lives in Lawrenceville, New Jersey where she is a member of the U.S. 1 Poets’ Cooperative, and since 2015 has been part of the Cool Women Poets critique and performance group.

Refreshments will be served.

Memorize: A Holiday Roundtable Poetry Reading

Thursday, December 8, 6:30-8:30 p.m. at the Greene Art Gallery, 29 Whitfield Street, Guilford. Poets and lovers of poetry, join the Guilford Poets Guild for its annual Holiday Roundtable, this year featuring memorized poems. Attendees are invited to recite a poem from memory — either your own poem or one written by someone else.

Please bring a favorite children’s book, new or very gently used, to be donated to the Branford Community Dining Room. (You may also choose to read from your book instead of sharing a poem.) The reading is free and open to the public. Refreshments are served. For more information gpoetsguild@gmail.com, 203-453-5213.

November Reading of Guilford Poets

Guilford Free Library and the Guilford Poets Guild Present a poetry reading with Carol Altieri and Karen Gronback Johnson, Thursday, Nov. 10 at 6:30 pm at the Guilford Free Library, 67 Park Avenue, Guilford. Open Mic 6:30 to 7 pm. Refreshments served.

Carol Altieri earned a Degree of Advanced Study at Wesleyan University, a Master’s Degree in English and American literature and a Sixth Year Degree in Educational Leadership at Southern Connecticut State University. While there, she received “Graduate Poet of the Year.” A member of the Guilford Poets Guild, she is now a retired English and science teacher. Parables of Passages is her sixth published book of poetry. She also writes essays, memoirs, and letters.

After living almost her whole life in Connecticut, Karen Gronback Johnson and her husband have recently retired to a farm in the mountains of VA. In her previous life Karen was a member of the clergy in East Haven, a police chaplain, and founder of East Haven United, a non-profit agency working to bring unity to the town. She has been affiliated with members of Guilford Poets Guild since 1978.

Ben Grossberg in October

The Guilford Poets Guild presents poet Ben Grossberg for a poetry reading at the Guilford Free Library, 67 Park Avenue, Guilford on Thursday, October 13, 6:30 p.m. in the Historical Room. There is an open mic 6:30-7 p.m. and refreshments are served.

Benjamin S. Grossberg is the author of Space Traveler (University of Tampa, 2014); Sweet Core Orchard (University of Tampa, 2009), winner of the Tampa Review Prize and a Lambda Literary Award; and Underwater Lengths in a Single Breath (Ashland Poetry Press, 2007), winner of the Snyder Prize. He has also published a chapbook, The Auctioneer Bangs his Gavel, with Kent State University Press (2006). A second chapbook, An Elegy, is forthcoming from Jacar Press. His poems have appeared widely, including in the Pushcart Prize and Best American Poetry anthologies, Poetry Daily and Verse Daily, and the magazines Paris Review, Yale Review, Southern Review, and The Sun. A recipient of individual artist grants from the states of Ohio and Connecticut, he serves as Assistant Poetry Editor and regular book reviewer for the Antioch Review. Ben is Director of Creative Writing at the University of Hartford, in Hartford.