Calendar Alert: Brattleboro Poetry Event, 4/24

Just in from Dede Cummings, this info:

Poetry Series at the Dianich Gallery: A Poetry/Prose Reading to Benefit Brattleboro Climate Protection
at the Dianich Gallery
6:00-7:30 p.m.
Refreshments will be served

The “Poetry Series” at the Dianich will continue in April, and to honor National Poetry Month, with poet, and Dartmouth College professor, Cleopatra Mathis on Thursday, April 24th from 6:00-7:30, in the gallery surrounded by the artwork of Brattleboro-based artist, Myles Danaher. In addition to Mathis’s reading, local writer, David Blistein, will read from his novel in progress.

Cleopatra Mathis was born and raised in Ruston, Louisiana, of Greek and Cherokee descent.. Her first five books of poems were published by Sheep Meadow Press. A sixth collection, White Sea, was published by Sarabande Books in 2005.
Cleopatra Mathis’ work has appeared widely in anthologies, textbooks, magazines and journals, including The New Yorker, Poetry, American Poetry Review, Tri-Quarterly, The Southern Review, The Georgia Review, The Made Thing: An Anthology of Contemporary Southern Poetry, The Extraordinary Tide: Poetry by American Women, and The Practice of Poetry. Various prizes for her work include two National Endowment for the Arts grants, in 1984 and 2003; the Jane Kenyon Award for Outstanding Book of Poems in 2001; the Peter Lavin Award for Younger Poets from the Academy of American Poets; two Pushcart Prizes: 1980 and 2006; The Robert Frost Resident Poet Award; a 1981-82 Fellowship in Poetry at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts; The May Sarton Award; and Individual Artist Fellowships in Poetry from both the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts and the New Jersey State Arts Council.
Cleopatra Mathis is the Frederick Sessions Beebe Professor of the Art of Writing at Dartmouth College, where she has directed the Creative Writing Program since 1982.

David Blistein graduated from Amherst College where he studied under the novelist Robert Stone. Realizing he actually had to make money as a writer, he began a career as a freelance copywriter, eventually owning Church & Main, a regional advertising agency in Keene, NH. Since leaving the business in 2005, he has been writing an extended novel in which historical characters walk into (and, in most cases, out of) his everyday life.

Dede Cummings is a graduate of Middlebury College where she received the Mary Dunning Thwing award for creative writing and attended the Bread Loaf Writers’ Workshop as a poetry contributor. She will read a few sections of poems (Chaucer and Elliot) in honor of National Poetry Month and serve as “poetic mistress of ceremonies.” Refreshments will be served and the artist, Myles Danaher, will be on hand to discuss his work. $5.00 suggested donation will benefit the “green” work of BCP.

Hosted by the Dianich Gallery in Brattleboro at 139 Main Street (down the side alley and through the glass doors), the reading is made possible by curator and gallery owner, Catherine Dianich and with thanks to Hooker Dunham building owner, Simi Berman (herself and artist and loyal patron of the arts in Brattleboro). Information: 802-254-9076.