GPG Member, Julie Fitzpatrick, remounts show from Guilford Performing Arts Festival 2021, All the World’s a Stage: A Guilford (Pandemic) Love Story, on February 12th at 4pm at First Congregational Church – 122 Broad Street in Guilford.

“All the World’s a Stage: A Guilford (Pandemic) Love Story” is a spoken word performance piece drawn from pandemic & love stories shared by more than 70 Guilford residents with writer/performer Julie Fitzpatrick. It is a community story full of heart, hope and honesty featuring: Stephanie Little Brown, Dana Canaveri, Alice Chen, Victoria Newman and Meg Teape with poetic narration by Fitzpatrick. 

Christina Stevens will provide American Sign Language interpretation.  

There will be a talkback following the presentation. 

Seats are first come, first seated & they are free. 

Donations for First Church’s Music Program will be gladly accepted.

Grayson Books is pleased to announce the publication of Patricia Horn O’Brien’s The Scatter and the Gap!

Advanced Praise for The Scatter and the Gap: Patricia O’Brien’s native sympathy colors her renderings of a bus driver or a lone woman on a train; and the pictures she draws of her beloved marsh and shore are exquisite and various. Her gift to us is to suggest their connection to a universe both cherishing and in constant turmoil. As readers, we are the beneficiaries of her willingness to share her inner and outer worlds in these unfailingly beautiful and often surprising poems.—Nan Fitz-Hugh Meneely, author of Simple Absence & GPG Member

About the Author: Patricia Horn O’Brien helped in the establishment of Prison Hospice in three Connecticut prisons and facilitated poetry workshops with fellow poets at York Correctional Institution. She initiated the ongoing program, Paintings and Poetry, at Florence Griswold Museum. She is the author of a poetry collection, When Less Than Perfect is Enough, and is the co-author, with her son Richard Manders, of a memoir about their adoption story, The Laughing Rabbit: A Mother, a Son and the Ties that Bind.

The Scatter and the Gap is available in bookstores, through Ingram Books, from amazon.com or through the publisher.

For more information, contact Patricia O’Brien at patriciaobrien1937@gmail.com and visit Grayson Books at http://www.graysonbooks.com

Paperback: 118 pages Publication Date: January 6, 2023
ISBN: 979-8-9855442-3-7 Grayson Books $16.95

A Christmas Three: Holiday Play Readings Hosted by Moses Gunn Theatre Company

• Saturday, December 17, 2022
• 2:00 PM  4:00 PM
• Guilford Public Library

Just us for staged readings of the following three short hilarious Holiday plays by Frederick Stroppel on Saturday 12/17:

THE GIFT EXCHANGE– performed by Julie Fitzpatrick and Gwen Gunn.

Two old friends meet for lunch to swap gifts. It doesn’t go well.

LAND OF SWEETS– performed by Primi Carey.

A somewhat tipsy, somewhat embittered ballet teacher attempts to stage The Nutcracker while recalling a dance career that might have gone better.

EPIPHANY– performed by Mark Hamilton, Roger Carey and Norman Marshall.

These three dudes, as much wise guys as wise men, show up at this barn. Something about a kid getting born. It goes fairly well.

Performance at the Guilford Free Library, 67 Park Street in Guilford, CT.

Saturday, December 17 @ 2 PM.

No admission charge. See you there!

Join us for the Guilford Poets Guild Holiday Roundtable Evening of Poetry this Thursday, December 8th 6:30-8pm at the Guilford Public Library! The theme of the evening’s poems is “Seasonal” featuring late fall or winter poems and holiday tributes… (or their opposite.)

There will be an open mic from 6:30-7pm so please bring your own poem to share during that time. At 7pm, The GPG Poets will share their “Seasonal” selections.

Please register for this in-person event here: http://guilfordfreelibrary.org/guilford-poets-guild-holiday-roundtable/46491/

If you’d like to Zoom in for the event, please click here at 6:30pm on 12/8: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/7746376275

*Note: we would be so glad to receive donations of wrapped books as gifts for children at this event!  The appropriate age for the child should be noted on the gift wrapping.  Please bring your donation with you to the Library and we will collect the books that evening. The Branford Soup Kitchen will gladly distribute the books to needy families.  

Join us for the Guilford Poets Guild Holiday Roundtable Evening of Poetry on Thursday, December 8th 6:30-8pm at the Guilford Public Library! The theme of the evening’s poems is “Seasonal” featuring late fall or winter poems and holiday tributes… (or their opposite.)

There will be an open mic from 6:30-7pm so please bring your own poem to share during that time. At 7pm, The GPG Poets will share their “Seasonal” selections.

Please register for this in-person event here: http://guilfordfreelibrary.org/guilford-poets-guild-holiday-roundtable/46491/

If you’d like to Zoom in for the event, please click here at 6:30pm on 12/8: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/7746376275

*Note: we would be so glad to receive donations of wrapped books as gifts for children at this event!  The appropriate age for the child should be noted on the gift wrapping.  Please bring your donation with you to the Library and we will collect the books that evening. The Branford Soup Kitchen will gladly distribute the books to needy families.  

photo credit: Jonathan Meyer

The Guilford Poets Guild is grateful for the excellent leadership of outgoing President Julie Harris and extends a warm welcome to members Gwen Gunn and Norman Marshall as the GPG new Co-Presidents!

On November 10th, Guilford Poets Guild will host a live poetry reading as part of GPG’s Second Thursday Poetry Series featuring Karen Johnson!

Karen Gronback Johnson was born and brought up in CT. After serving as pastor of the Old Stone Church, United Church of Christ, in East Haven, for almost 15 years, she retired to the mountains of southwestern Virginia, where she has found a gentler way of life among gardens, woods, and a big old house with a wrap around porch. In 2020, her first book of poetry, Story Journey Spirit, was published through Human Error Publishing. Her advice to fellow poets: don’t release a book during a pandemic.

Join us to hear Karen’s poetry on Thursday November 10th at 6:30pm. We’ll begin with an Open Mic and then segue into hearing Karen’s words from 7-8pm. Please register for this exciting evening of poetry on the Guilford Free Library website.

To join this event virtually, please join us at: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/7746376275

On October 13th, Guilford Poets Guild will host a Zoom poetry reading as part of their monthly Second Thursday Poetry Series featuring Julian Matthews! Julian Matthews is an emerging poet from Malaysia of mixed-race minority, who is published in The American Journal of Poetry, Beltway Poetry Quarterly and Borderless Journal, among others.  He stumbled onto poetry by accident five years ago at a writing workshop. That happy accident has turned into a rabid compulsion. He is still extricating himself from the crash. Welcome to his recovery. 

Join us to hear Julian’s poetry on Thursday October 13th at 6:30pm. We’ll begin with an Open Mic and then segue into hearing Julian’s work from 7-8pm. Please register for this exciting evening of poetry on the Guilford Free Library website.

On September 8th, via Zoom, Guilford Poets Guild will welcome The Write Blend to kick off the Fall’s GPG Second Thursday Series! The Write Blend is a unique, culturally diverse poetry ensemble of six poets whose poetry is published in a new collection of poems, entitled “The Write Blend”. The poetry ensemble has most recently been featured on Poets vs Pandemic sponsored by Café Muse and Word Works Organizations. The Write Blend has read at the Library of Congress for the Maryland State Poet Laureate, Grace Cavalieri’s, “The Poet and The Poem”. The Write Blend has also performed for a Black History Poetry Festival, sponsored by the William Joseph Seymour Foundation in Oxon Hill United Methodist Church.

To join us and listen to The Write Blend, please register on the Guilford Free Library Website: http://guilfordfreelibrary.org/ There will be an Open Mic from 6:30-7pm followed by The Write Blend’s poetry from 7-8pm.

History of The Write Blend: Founded in July 2018 by Diane Wilbon Parks. Diane writes that five poets were asked to become a part of something wonderfully different and diverse because of their own unique voices, reading and writing styles, and they agreed to assemble as The Write Blend. Many times, poetry events/readings do not have a culturally diverse representation in the audiences and or featured poets; it was critical to establish a culturally diverse poetry circle (ensemble) of poets who could offer a broader landscape of poetry to all audiences. As a result, the six poets, including founder Diane Wilbon Parks, have become the right (write) blend of voices that deliver a unique signature in our body of work and writing style, as well as our individual contributions as leaders and creatives in the poetry community.

Join us on Zoom to listen to The Write Blend on September 8 – please register here.

After a long viral hiatus, the MOSES GUNN PLAY COMPANY resumes its play-reading series at the Guilford Free Library. Saturday’s featured work is MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS by John Von Hartz which was successfully produced in New York. Mel Gussow of the New York Times praised the play, writing “The interrelationships in a close, mutually dependent family of women—grandmother, mother and daughter— are examined with humor and perspicacity in John von Hartz’s new play, ‘Mothers and Daughters… What makes the work appealing is that it is not always clear to us or to the characters which one is acting as the mother and which is acting as the daughter…The play has an endearing protagonist and a theme—mothers and daughters who are ‘blood sisters and best friends’ as well as rivals— that strikes a chord of universality.’” Please register for the play reading here: https://www.guilfordfreelibrary.org/moses-gunn-play-company/45394/ The MGPC has, to date, performed two other plays by Von Hartz, A MAN IN THE HOUSE and OFF-SEASON. The cast on Saturday will include MGPC veterans Primi Carey, Norman Marshall, Susan Jacobson, Julie Fitzpatrick and Carolyn Marble.