Chester gallery reading with two poets from GPG

You’re invited to a reading in the round by members of the Connecticut River Poetry Conference in Maple and Main’s Stone Gallery (One Maple Street, Chester, CT 06412) on Wednesday, July 19 from 7:30 to 8:30 p.m. A reception of wine and food follows.

This special event, open to the public, is the second year the group has read in the Stone Gallery where “Sharing the Vision,” a two-woman exhibit by Maple and Main artists Linda DeStefanis and Barbara Rossitto is being shown during July.

For the past seven years a singular group of poets meets for a summer week of workshops, seminars, readings, camaraderie and literary high-jinx at Chester’s Guest House Conference Center Shoreline. Gray Jacobik, a poet and Maple and Main artist, and Nancy Fitz-Hugh Meneely founded this conference, which grew out of an advanced poetry seminar at The Frost Place in Franconia, NH.

Jacobik and Meneely will be joined by notable and much-published poets: Ruth Foley of Attleboro, MA., Sharon Olson of Lawrenceville, NJ., Carole Stasiowski of Cotuit, MA., Hiram Larew of Upper Marlboro, MD., Anne Harding Woodworth of Washington, D.C., and Lawrence Wray of Pittsburgh, PA.

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The Friday Night Painters / Show Their Stuff

 

Opening Reception: Friday, July 28, 5-7 pm
Gallery Talk: Sunday, July 30, 2-4 pm

Guilford Poets Guild member Gwen Gunn is one of 21 artists participating in the Guilford Art Center show The Friday Night Painters / Show Their Stuff. The show is an exhibition of works by a feisty, dedicated, close-knit group of painters, some of whom have been working at GAC since the mid-1970s. The exhibition will be on view July 28-August 11, 2017, in the Mill Gallery at Guilford Art Center, 411 Church Street, Guilford, CT (I-95, exit 58).

The opening reception is Friday, July 28, 5-7 pm, and a gallery talk, “The Story of the Friday Night Painters,” will be held Sunday, July 30, 2-4 pm. It will feature a brief history of the group, an informal Q&A exchange, readings by four Friday Night Painter (FNP) painter/writers (poems, essays, and short stories related to painting), and refreshments. Both events are free and open to the public.

Participating artists include: Lexi McCrady Axon, Bernie Braverman, Edward Casey, Catherine Ferguson, Virginia Foster, Shirley Gonzales, Timothee Graze, Gwen Gunn, Alice Hayden, Ed Horan, Ellen Lowe, Christina Maile, Molly McDonald, Julanne Meyers, Frank Modell, Parviz Mohassel, Scott Paterson, Diana Perron, Dan Rice, Rex Walden, and Marja Watson.

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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.