Tuesday, July 01, 2008

Calendar Alerts: Poetry Around New England


Good news: You can attend readings by award-winning poets Galway Kinnell and Maxine Kumin this month. And if you've got some gasoline in the tank, there's an amazing number of poetry events coming up. Listen to those who are already recognized, and sample the poetry that will claim its honored place for years to come.

Sunday July 6 is Frost Day in Franconia, NH, at Robert Frost's farmhouse home up on the hill -- Pulitzer Prize finalist Sydney Lea of Newbury, VT, will read from his work, and there's a celebration of the Franconia selectman who thought to capture the property and dedicate it to poetry, David Schaffer. Events start at 2 p.m.; come early, because you'll park at the bottom of the hill and stroll one third of a mile up (handicap parking up at the site, though). See www.frostplace.org for more info.

Then you'll need to drive quickly and deliberately to make the next event:

The Galway Kinnell reading is also Sunday July 6, at 7 p.m., part of the Collected Poets Series at Mocha Maya's Coffee House, 47 Bridge Street, Shelburne Falls, MA (413-625-6292; wheelchair accessible; free). The Solstice MFA in Creative Writing Program of Pine Manor College announces its July Reading Series. The following writers will read from their work at 7:30 p.m. (unless otherwise noted) in the Founder’s Room of Pine Manor College, located at 400 Heath Street in Chestnut Hill. All readings are free and open to the public; copies of the authors’ books will be available for sale and signing before and after the readings. Plenty of free parking!

Think ahead for Maxine Kumin in the St. Johnsbury Athenaeum's reading series: Wednesday July 16 at 7:30 p.m. At this point, plans are to stage the reading in the Black Box theatre on the nearby St. Johnsbury Academy campus, to take advantage of more seating and also air conditioning. Free, with books on hand to purchase from Kingdom Books (that's us), including much of Kumin's early work, as well as her political and personal gem of a current collection, STILL TO MOW.

Jane Shore and Julie Agoos follow in the St. J. Athenaeum series, on Wed. July 30; more on that, in a later post.

Don't miss the extraordinarily generous benefit reading that Patrick Donnelly and friends, with the Amherst College Creative Writing Program, have pulled together on behalf of The Frost Place: Saturday, July 19, at 2 p.m. in the Pruyne Lecture Hall (Fayerweather Hall 115), at Amherst College, Amherst, MA; admission: $5. Readers will include:
Patrick Donnelly
Ellen Dudley
Daniel Hall
Henry Lyman
Cleopatra Mathis
Martha Rhodes
Ellen Doré Watson

plus master-of-ceremony Jim Schley, Executive Director of The Frost Place. Each reader will offer a favorite poem by Robert Frost as well as a short selection from his or her own work. Directions to Amherst College: https://cms.amherst.edu/aboutamherst/visiting/directions


Finally, there's a mix of poetry and fiction at the Pine Manor College Solstice MFA Program's summer reading series, held at this small college campus just outside Boston:

Friday, July 11: Fiction & nonfiction writer Randall Kenan (The Fire This Time, Walking on Water: Black American Lives at the Turn of the Century and Let the Dead Bury Their Dead), & novelist Dennis Lehane (Mystic River, Shutter Island, and the forthcoming The Given Day).

Saturday, July 12: Graduating MFA student Kirsten Blocker, plus poet Kathleen Aguero (author of Daughter Of, The Real Weather, and Thirsty Day), & novelist Sterling Watson (author of Sweet Dream, Baby, The Calling, and Weep No More, My Brother).

Sunday, July 13: Graduating MFA student Adam Eisenson, Program Administrator and fiction writer Tanya Whiton (published in Crazyhorse and Northwest Review), plus novelist & young people’s writer Laban Carrick Hill (author of America Dreaming: How Youth Changed America in the 60s, A Brush With Napoleon, and Casa Azul).

Tuesday, July 15: Graduating MFA student Maryann Jacob, MFA Program Director and poet Meg Kearney (An Unkindness of Ravens, The Secret of Me, and the forthcoming Home By Now), and poet, essayist, & short-story writer Ray Gonzalez (The Hawk Temple at Tierra Grande, The Underground Heart: A Return to a Hidden Landscape, and the forthcoming Faith Run: Lyrical Poems and Cool Auditor: Prose Poems).

Wednesday, July 16: Graduating MFA student John Theo, Jr., YA novelist Laura Williams McCaffrey (author of Alia Waking and Water Shaper), and special guest novelist & nonfiction writer Roland Merullo (author of In Revere, In Those Days, Golfing With God, A Little Love Story, and the forthcoming American Savior).

Thursday, July 17: Poet & fiction writer Steven Huff (A Pig In Paris, The Water We Came From, and More Daring Escapes), fiction & nonfiction writer Joy Castro (The Truth Book), & novelist Helen Elaine Lee (Water Marked, The Serpent’s Gift, and the forthcoming Life Without).

Friday, July 18: poet Laure-Anne Bosselaar (author of A New Hunger, Small Gods of Grief, and The Hour Between Dog and Wolf), YA novelist An Na (author of The Fold, A Step From Heaven, and Wait for Me), and essayist & memoirist Michael Steinberg (editor of Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction and author of Still Pitching).

Directions to Pine Manor College, complete bios of our authors, and more information about the Solstice MFA Program can be found at www.pmc.edu/mfa.

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