Poets Gladding and Budbill Read Tonight, St. J.

At 7:30 tonight (Wednesday) at the St. Johnsbury Athenaeum, poets Joday Gladding and David Budbill read from their work. Expect edgu, experimental work, perhaps flavored with jazz. Gladding's new work with forms has included writing on fireplace logs and split stones, although she may be a bit more paper-oriented this summer -- she's the 2007 Resident Poet at the Frost Place, which offers this summary:

Jody Gladding is a translator as well as poet. Her translations from French to English include Sylviane Agacinski’s Time Passing (2003, Columbia University Press), Michel Pastoureau’s The Devil’s Cloth (2001, Columbia University Press), and Pierre Moinot’s As Night Follows Day (2001, Welcome Rain). Her translation of Jean Giono’s The Serpent of Stars (Archipelago, 2004) was a finalist for the 2004 French–American Translation Prize. She is the author of Stone Crop, which was the 1993 Yale Younger Poets award winner, and she has also received a Whiting Writers Award in poetry. In 2000, Gladding was selected by then Vermont State Poet Ellen Bryant Voigt to participate in a Readers Digest Foundation-funded program called “The Poet Next Door,” working directly with Vermont high school students in person and through an interactive television network. Gladding also teaches in the MFA in Writing Program at Vermont College. Her most recent book is The Moon Rose (Chester Creek Press, 2006), with accompanying woodcuts by Susan Walp.

David Budbill long ago achieved a compelling meld of three forces: his New York City jazz roots and musician friends; his back-to-land life on a mountainside outside Hardwick, Vermont; and a fierce attachment to the Zen poets. Sometimes he works a bit of music into his performances (and sometimes a lot!). His web site is worth repeated explorations (www.davidbudbill.com).

The reading takes place in the gallery of the St. Johnsbury Athenaeum, on Main Street at the top of Eastern Avenue. Seating is limited, so arrive early -- and prepare for heat and humidity, the room is not air-conditioned. Light refreshments and book signing follow.