Tuesday, March 24, 2009
I will be reading at Florence Griswold Museum on Friday, April 3 with Marilyn Nelson, help fund Soul Mountain Writer's Retreat!
Ellen Steinbaum & David Surette Read at Fireside March 24 @ 7:30
Cambridge Cohousing Presents The Fireside Reading Series
Molly Lynn Watt, Curator
Ellen Steinbaum & David Surette read Tues, March 24, 2009
ELLEN STEINBAUM, a poet and journalist, has been a popular featured reader both nationally and throughout the Boston area. She writes a literary column for The Boston Globe and is also the author of a one-person play, CenterPiece, which she has performed. In her first book, Afterwords, she looked at loss, with poems about the illness and death of her husband. Her new book, Container Gardening speaks of what is perishable and what endures and what makes us who we are. The poet Lloyd Schwartz says, " In Container Gardening the losses we suffer—private, public, political, natural—are universal. But she knows, with wry certainty, that “what is broken can / (never) / be repaired / the pieces can / (not) / be put back.” Definitely one or the other. ...The contained garden of her poems becomes a conscious strategy to deal with all those—all our—losses.
DAVID SURETTE’s new book of poetry is Easy to Keep, Hard to Keep In. Surette’s poems have recently appeared in the anthologies French Connections: A Gathering of Franco-American Poets and Cadence of Hooves: A Celebration of Horses. He is a contributing editor at Salamander and taught poetry at this year’s Cape Cod Writers’ Conference. He co-hosts Poetribe, a poetry series in East Bridgewater, Massachusetts.
The reading begins with a short open mike. Come at 7 PM to help set up, sign up for open mike and nosh and schmooze. Following the reading you are invited to a wine and cheese reception. (A donation of $3 is requested to help with the cost.)
DIRECTIONS! The Fireside Reading Committee is Molly Lynn Watt, curator, Richard Curran, Jenise Aminoff and Dan Lynn Watt, webmagicians, Julie Rochlin, Lolita Paiewonsky, Debbie Pfeiffer and many others on logistics, and the writers who come month after month. Thank you all for contributing! The reading is held in the living room in front of the fireplace at Cambridge Co-Housing at 175 Richdale Ave, Cambridge, MA 02140, 3 blocks from the Red Line stop at Porter Square. A request to the City of Cambridge allows out-of-town visitors to park on Richdale Avenue from 6:30-10:30 PM. Contact Molly Lynn Watt, 617-354-8242, mollywatt@comcast.net or Jenise Aminoff, 617-576-2004, jenise@alum.mit.edu, or www.cambridgecohousing.org/Fireside/index.html
Molly Lynn Watt, Curator
Ellen Steinbaum & David Surette read Tues, March 24, 2009
ELLEN STEINBAUM, a poet and journalist, has been a popular featured reader both nationally and throughout the Boston area. She writes a literary column for The Boston Globe and is also the author of a one-person play, CenterPiece, which she has performed. In her first book, Afterwords, she looked at loss, with poems about the illness and death of her husband. Her new book, Container Gardening speaks of what is perishable and what endures and what makes us who we are. The poet Lloyd Schwartz says, " In Container Gardening the losses we suffer—private, public, political, natural—are universal. But she knows, with wry certainty, that “what is broken can / (never) / be repaired / the pieces can / (not) / be put back.” Definitely one or the other. ...The contained garden of her poems becomes a conscious strategy to deal with all those—all our—losses.
DAVID SURETTE’s new book of poetry is Easy to Keep, Hard to Keep In. Surette’s poems have recently appeared in the anthologies French Connections: A Gathering of Franco-American Poets and Cadence of Hooves: A Celebration of Horses. He is a contributing editor at Salamander and taught poetry at this year’s Cape Cod Writers’ Conference. He co-hosts Poetribe, a poetry series in East Bridgewater, Massachusetts.
The reading begins with a short open mike. Come at 7 PM to help set up, sign up for open mike and nosh and schmooze. Following the reading you are invited to a wine and cheese reception. (A donation of $3 is requested to help with the cost.)
DIRECTIONS! The Fireside Reading Committee is Molly Lynn Watt, curator, Richard Curran, Jenise Aminoff and Dan Lynn Watt, webmagicians, Julie Rochlin, Lolita Paiewonsky, Debbie Pfeiffer and many others on logistics, and the writers who come month after month. Thank you all for contributing! The reading is held in the living room in front of the fireplace at Cambridge Co-Housing at 175 Richdale Ave, Cambridge, MA 02140, 3 blocks from the Red Line stop at Porter Square. A request to the City of Cambridge allows out-of-town visitors to park on Richdale Avenue from 6:30-10:30 PM. Contact Molly Lynn Watt, 617-354-8242, mollywatt@comcast.net or Jenise Aminoff, 617-576-2004, jenise@alum.mit.edu, or www.cambridgecohousing.org/Fireside/index.html
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
I'll be reading on Feb. 19th from Shadow People!
Hope you can join at Gallery 55 in Natick at 7:30 pm at 55 South Main Street, for more information, phone another Molly, Molly Saccardo at 508-740-0260. Open mic follows plus refreshments!
FIRESIDE READING: Is That Your Child? Florence Ladd and Marion Kilson read from their memoir about rearing biracial children
Tuesday, February 17, 2009 • 7:30 pm
MARION KILSON is co-author with Florence Ladd of Is That Your Child: Mothers Talk About Rearing Biracial Children (Lexington Books, 2009). She received her Ph.D. in social anthropology from Harvard University in 1967 and retired as dean of the graduate school at Salem State College in 2001. She currently is a Museum Scholar at the Museum of African American History in Boston. Her previous publications include Claiming Place: Biracial Young Adults of the Post-Civil Rights Era (2001), four other books, and many articles on African and African American society and culture. She and her husband live in Lexington, Massachusetts; their three children and six grandchildren live nearby in Boston and Brookline.
FLORENCE LADD, a psychologist, is also a poet and fiction writer. Her novel, Sarah's Psalm (Scribner), received the 1997 best fiction award from the American Library Association's Black Caucus. Her poems have been published in The Women’s Review of Books, The Progressive, The Rockhurst Review and Sweet Auburn. With Marion Kilson, she is the co-author of Is That Your Child? Mothers Talk about Rearing Biracial Children. She is married with six stepchildren and a son, the poet Michael Ladd, who lives in Paris. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts and in Flavigny-sur-Ozerain in France.
MARION KILSON is co-author with Florence Ladd of Is That Your Child: Mothers Talk About Rearing Biracial Children (Lexington Books, 2009). She received her Ph.D. in social anthropology from Harvard University in 1967 and retired as dean of the graduate school at Salem State College in 2001. She currently is a Museum Scholar at the Museum of African American History in Boston. Her previous publications include Claiming Place: Biracial Young Adults of the Post-Civil Rights Era (2001), four other books, and many articles on African and African American society and culture. She and her husband live in Lexington, Massachusetts; their three children and six grandchildren live nearby in Boston and Brookline.
FLORENCE LADD, a psychologist, is also a poet and fiction writer. Her novel, Sarah's Psalm (Scribner), received the 1997 best fiction award from the American Library Association's Black Caucus. Her poems have been published in The Women’s Review of Books, The Progressive, The Rockhurst Review and Sweet Auburn. With Marion Kilson, she is the co-author of Is That Your Child? Mothers Talk about Rearing Biracial Children. She is married with six stepchildren and a son, the poet Michael Ladd, who lives in Paris. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts and in Flavigny-sur-Ozerain in France.
Friday, January 23, 2009
PRAISE SONG FOR THE DAY: Obama's poet evokes 'our highest yearnings'
Immediately following the swearing in and speech of Barach Obama, now 44th President of the United States of America, we watched Elizabeth Alexander step up to the podium. She is the fourth poet invited to give an occasional poem at any inauguration. She follows Robert Frost, Maya Angelou and Miller Williams. She is a Yale University Professor, a former Radciffe Fellow, an African American scholar and poet. As a toddler, her parents carried her to the Mall for the March on Washington in 1963. I had pondered for days, what might a poet say? I did not envy her as stood with the whole world attending. She wore a bright red coat, signaling by her choice of color, some of what I was feeling: passion, blood, excitement, danger, fire, ambition and yes, imperial. She paused, raised her face, and in a deliberate, clear voice said her poem’s first line, “Praise song for the day.”
Praise song is a musical genre, developed during the sixties and seventies, and used in some contemporary services to bring everybody in, to revitalize old ways of worship. Praise songs often use simple, repetitive lyrics accompanied on guitar. (You may order 2-CD sets of hits on Amazon or download them to your ipod.)
Perfect choice, I thought, no longer worried, I settled in to listen, to take the journey with her through her praise song.
“Each day we go about our business, walking past each other, catching each others’ eyes or not, about to speak or speaking. All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din, each one of our ancestors on our tongues.” With this apparently simple everyday start, using everyday speech and everyday rhythm, she gathers all of us into her poem, like a storyteller would. I followed each image,“a woman and her son wait for the bus”, the person “patching a tire”, as she lists for us the work of repairing, the honor in repairing what is torn and broken, ripped or cracked. I, like the farmer, consider “the changing sky”, am ready to take my pencil out, and go with her to “the other side.” I, too, know, “There is something better down the road.” I will “walk into that which we cannot see.”
Alexander straightens, tells it plain and strong, “many have died for this day. Sing the names of the dead who have brought us here…” and now tears roll down my cheeks as I am remembering the cost of freedom: the Civil Rights Movement, the Civil War, the American Revolution, my grandmother and her trunk rocking across the sea from Ireland, my ancestors banished from a jail in Scotland to Virginia for practicing the Protestant religion, campaigning for this election in New Hampshire towns… Until I am called back by her voice, determined, asking, “What if the mightiest word is love…” “In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.” I am ready, I am already “walking forward into that light.” I am already writing a new sentence.
Alexander’s poem intends to evoke in each of us our longest journeys and our highest yearnings, a call to a safe new day. She invites us to the honorable work of transforming our collective future from our blood-soaked past, into a more loving place. She does this in 14 three-lined stanzas and a one-line coda, “praise song for walking forward in that light.” She is a poet descendent of Walt Whitman, she is a songwriter descendent to the Shaker strains, “It’s a Gift to be Simple.”
Writing an occasional poem is a tall order, an honor most poets would be unwilling to risk. Before the Inauguration former Poet Laureate, Billy Collins said he did not envy Alexander as, “such poems are nearly impossible to bring off.” I think Alexander brought it off, despite a rumble among bloggers, She’s inviting us to follow her example and begin the work of writing our nation’s future. Let’s risk it, let’s accept.
Appeared in Cambridge Chronicle as Guest Commentary on January 29, 2009
Praise song is a musical genre, developed during the sixties and seventies, and used in some contemporary services to bring everybody in, to revitalize old ways of worship. Praise songs often use simple, repetitive lyrics accompanied on guitar. (You may order 2-CD sets of hits on Amazon or download them to your ipod.)
Perfect choice, I thought, no longer worried, I settled in to listen, to take the journey with her through her praise song.
“Each day we go about our business, walking past each other, catching each others’ eyes or not, about to speak or speaking. All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din, each one of our ancestors on our tongues.” With this apparently simple everyday start, using everyday speech and everyday rhythm, she gathers all of us into her poem, like a storyteller would. I followed each image,“a woman and her son wait for the bus”, the person “patching a tire”, as she lists for us the work of repairing, the honor in repairing what is torn and broken, ripped or cracked. I, like the farmer, consider “the changing sky”, am ready to take my pencil out, and go with her to “the other side.” I, too, know, “There is something better down the road.” I will “walk into that which we cannot see.”
Alexander straightens, tells it plain and strong, “many have died for this day. Sing the names of the dead who have brought us here…” and now tears roll down my cheeks as I am remembering the cost of freedom: the Civil Rights Movement, the Civil War, the American Revolution, my grandmother and her trunk rocking across the sea from Ireland, my ancestors banished from a jail in Scotland to Virginia for practicing the Protestant religion, campaigning for this election in New Hampshire towns… Until I am called back by her voice, determined, asking, “What if the mightiest word is love…” “In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.” I am ready, I am already “walking forward into that light.” I am already writing a new sentence.
Alexander’s poem intends to evoke in each of us our longest journeys and our highest yearnings, a call to a safe new day. She invites us to the honorable work of transforming our collective future from our blood-soaked past, into a more loving place. She does this in 14 three-lined stanzas and a one-line coda, “praise song for walking forward in that light.” She is a poet descendent of Walt Whitman, she is a songwriter descendent to the Shaker strains, “It’s a Gift to be Simple.”
Writing an occasional poem is a tall order, an honor most poets would be unwilling to risk. Before the Inauguration former Poet Laureate, Billy Collins said he did not envy Alexander as, “such poems are nearly impossible to bring off.” I think Alexander brought it off, despite a rumble among bloggers, She’s inviting us to follow her example and begin the work of writing our nation’s future. Let’s risk it, let’s accept.
Appeared in Cambridge Chronicle as Guest Commentary on January 29, 2009
Monday, December 29, 2008
We Three Invite You!
An evening of poetry and memoir
Denise Bergman
H. Susan Freireich
Molly Lynn Watt
Tuesday, January 13, 2008 at 7 p.m.
Cambridge Central Square Library
45 Pearl Street, Cambridge
Refreshments follow the reading!
Red Line subway to Central Square
Parking garage at the corner of Pearl and Green Streets
DENISE BERGMAN is the author of Seeing
Annie Sullivan, poems based on the early life
of Helen Keller’s teacher (2005), which was
translated into Braille and a Talking Book.
Her poems have been widely published. She
conceived and edited City River of Voices, an
anthology of urban poetry, and she was the
author of Keyhole Poems, a sequence that
combines the history of twelve specific urban
places with the present. Denise was poetry
editor of Sojourner, A Women’s Forum, and
hosted a cable TV show “Women in the
Arts.” She received several grants from the
Massachusetts Cultural Council and the
Puffin Foundation, and her work was
nominated for a Pushcart Prize. An excerpt
of her poem Red is permanently installed as
public art in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
H. SUSAN FREIREICH went back to school
to study public health after twenty-five years
of teaching, community organizing, and
political activism. She worked in the civilian
communities caught in El Salvador’s civil
war and is writing a book about the
experience. She is the recipient of the 1998
Frances Shaw Fellowship at The Ragdale
Foundation, and the 2005 Mildred Sherrod
Bissinger Memorial Endowed Fellowship at
the Djerassi Resident Artists Program. She
has also received support and time for her
work from Norcroft, Hedgebrook, Blue
Mountain Center, and Casa Libre en la
Solana. Her work has appeared in Poetic
Voices without Borders and in The Best Women’s
Travel Writing 2007 and The Best Women’s
Travel Writing 2008.
MOLLY LYNN WATT worked for 45 years
with schools for better education and with
communities organizing for peace, justice,
and civil rights. She retired a few years ago
to devote full time to writing. She curates the
Fireside Reading and is the poetry editor of
HILR Review and three anthologies of
Bagels with the Bards. With her husband, she
co-created and performs George & Ruth: Songs
and Letters of the Spanish Civil War, live and on
CD. Ibbetson Street Press published her
book of poems, Shadow People, in 2007. Her
work appears The Boston Globe, Chicken Soup,
Domestic Affairs, Eclipse, Fulcrum, G.W. Review,
Hampden-Sydney Review, Occasional Moose,
Peaceworks, The 2008 Poets' Guide To New
Hampshire, Red Wheelbarrow Literary Magazine,
South Carolina Review, Spare Change, Teachers &
Writers Collaborative, Westview, Best of Wilderness
House Literary Review, Wisconsin Review, Willard
& Maple, and others.
Denise Bergman
H. Susan Freireich
Molly Lynn Watt
Tuesday, January 13, 2008 at 7 p.m.
Cambridge Central Square Library
45 Pearl Street, Cambridge
Refreshments follow the reading!
Red Line subway to Central Square
Parking garage at the corner of Pearl and Green Streets
DENISE BERGMAN is the author of Seeing
Annie Sullivan, poems based on the early life
of Helen Keller’s teacher (2005), which was
translated into Braille and a Talking Book.
Her poems have been widely published. She
conceived and edited City River of Voices, an
anthology of urban poetry, and she was the
author of Keyhole Poems, a sequence that
combines the history of twelve specific urban
places with the present. Denise was poetry
editor of Sojourner, A Women’s Forum, and
hosted a cable TV show “Women in the
Arts.” She received several grants from the
Massachusetts Cultural Council and the
Puffin Foundation, and her work was
nominated for a Pushcart Prize. An excerpt
of her poem Red is permanently installed as
public art in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
H. SUSAN FREIREICH went back to school
to study public health after twenty-five years
of teaching, community organizing, and
political activism. She worked in the civilian
communities caught in El Salvador’s civil
war and is writing a book about the
experience. She is the recipient of the 1998
Frances Shaw Fellowship at The Ragdale
Foundation, and the 2005 Mildred Sherrod
Bissinger Memorial Endowed Fellowship at
the Djerassi Resident Artists Program. She
has also received support and time for her
work from Norcroft, Hedgebrook, Blue
Mountain Center, and Casa Libre en la
Solana. Her work has appeared in Poetic
Voices without Borders and in The Best Women’s
Travel Writing 2007 and The Best Women’s
Travel Writing 2008.
MOLLY LYNN WATT worked for 45 years
with schools for better education and with
communities organizing for peace, justice,
and civil rights. She retired a few years ago
to devote full time to writing. She curates the
Fireside Reading and is the poetry editor of
HILR Review and three anthologies of
Bagels with the Bards. With her husband, she
co-created and performs George & Ruth: Songs
and Letters of the Spanish Civil War, live and on
CD. Ibbetson Street Press published her
book of poems, Shadow People, in 2007. Her
work appears The Boston Globe, Chicken Soup,
Domestic Affairs, Eclipse, Fulcrum, G.W. Review,
Hampden-Sydney Review, Occasional Moose,
Peaceworks, The 2008 Poets' Guide To New
Hampshire, Red Wheelbarrow Literary Magazine,
South Carolina Review, Spare Change, Teachers &
Writers Collaborative, Westview, Best of Wilderness
House Literary Review, Wisconsin Review, Willard
& Maple, and others.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Suzanne Berger and Ifeanyi Menkiti
CAMBRIDGE COHOUSING PRESENTS
THE FIRESIDE READING SERIES
MOLLY LYNN WATT, CURATOR
Wednesday, January 21, 2009 • 7:30 pm
Note: Change of date from Jan. 20th to Jan. 21st due to Inauguration celebrations!
Suzanne Berger teaches advanced students in poetry at the Lesley Seminars at Lesley University. She has two books of poetry, These Rooms (Penmaen Press, 1979) and Legacies (Alice James Books, 1984) and a book of non-fiction, Horizontal Woman (Houghton Mifflin, 1997). Her work has also appeared in Ploughshares, The New Yorker, AGNI, Harvard Review, and elsewhere, and she has received a Pushcart Prize and a grant from the Somerville (Mass.) Arts Council. (11/2003)
Ifeanyi Menkiti was born in Onitsha, Nigeria and received his undergraduate degree from Pomona College.After further studies at Columbia and NYU he received his Ph.D in Philosophy from Harvard University. He has taught Philosophy at Wellesley College for more than 30 years, and is the owner of the Grolier Poetry Book Shop in Cambridge, the oldest poetry book store in the United States.
Menkiti is the author of four collections of poetry, Affirmations (1971), The Jubilation of Falling Bodies (1978), Of Altair, the Bright Light (2005), and Before A Common Soil (2007). Other poems have appeared in journals and periodicals such as the Sewanee Review, Ploughshares, New Directions, New Letters, The Massachusetts Review, Stony Brook, Bitterroot, the Southwest Review, and Chelsea. The African journals Okike, Transition and Nigeria Magazine have also carried his work. In 1975, he was honored with a fellowship in poetry from Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities through the Artists Foundation, followed in 1978 by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.
The reading begins with a short open mike. Come at 7 PM to help set up, sign up for open mike and nosh and schmooze. Following the reading you are invited to a wine and cheese reception. (A donation of $3 is requested to help with the cost.)
Walden St. bridge is now open!
The Fireside Reading Committee is Molly Lynn Watt, curator, Richard Curran, Jenise Aminoff and Dan Lynn Watt, webmagicians, Julie Rochlin, Lolita Paiewonsky, Debbie Pfeiffer and many others on logistics, and the writers who come month after month. Thank you all for contributing! The reading is held in the living room in front of the fireplace at Cambridge Co-Housing at 175 Richdale Ave, Cambridge, MA 02140, 3 blocks from the Red Line stop at Porter Square. A request to the City of Cambridge allows out-of-town visitors to park on Richdale Avenue from 6:30-10:30 PM. Contact Molly Lynn Watt, 617-354-8242, mollywatt@comcast.net or Jenise Aminoff, 617-576-2004, jenise@alum.mit.edu, or www.cambridgecohousing.org/Fireside/index.html
THE FIRESIDE READING SERIES
MOLLY LYNN WATT, CURATOR
Wednesday, January 21, 2009 • 7:30 pm
Note: Change of date from Jan. 20th to Jan. 21st due to Inauguration celebrations!
Suzanne Berger teaches advanced students in poetry at the Lesley Seminars at Lesley University. She has two books of poetry, These Rooms (Penmaen Press, 1979) and Legacies (Alice James Books, 1984) and a book of non-fiction, Horizontal Woman (Houghton Mifflin, 1997). Her work has also appeared in Ploughshares, The New Yorker, AGNI, Harvard Review, and elsewhere, and she has received a Pushcart Prize and a grant from the Somerville (Mass.) Arts Council. (11/2003)
Ifeanyi Menkiti was born in Onitsha, Nigeria and received his undergraduate degree from Pomona College.After further studies at Columbia and NYU he received his Ph.D in Philosophy from Harvard University. He has taught Philosophy at Wellesley College for more than 30 years, and is the owner of the Grolier Poetry Book Shop in Cambridge, the oldest poetry book store in the United States.
Menkiti is the author of four collections of poetry, Affirmations (1971), The Jubilation of Falling Bodies (1978), Of Altair, the Bright Light (2005), and Before A Common Soil (2007). Other poems have appeared in journals and periodicals such as the Sewanee Review, Ploughshares, New Directions, New Letters, The Massachusetts Review, Stony Brook, Bitterroot, the Southwest Review, and Chelsea. The African journals Okike, Transition and Nigeria Magazine have also carried his work. In 1975, he was honored with a fellowship in poetry from Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities through the Artists Foundation, followed in 1978 by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.
The reading begins with a short open mike. Come at 7 PM to help set up, sign up for open mike and nosh and schmooze. Following the reading you are invited to a wine and cheese reception. (A donation of $3 is requested to help with the cost.)
Walden St. bridge is now open!
The Fireside Reading Committee is Molly Lynn Watt, curator, Richard Curran, Jenise Aminoff and Dan Lynn Watt, webmagicians, Julie Rochlin, Lolita Paiewonsky, Debbie Pfeiffer and many others on logistics, and the writers who come month after month. Thank you all for contributing! The reading is held in the living room in front of the fireplace at Cambridge Co-Housing at 175 Richdale Ave, Cambridge, MA 02140, 3 blocks from the Red Line stop at Porter Square. A request to the City of Cambridge allows out-of-town visitors to park on Richdale Avenue from 6:30-10:30 PM. Contact Molly Lynn Watt, 617-354-8242, mollywatt@comcast.net or Jenise Aminoff, 617-576-2004, jenise@alum.mit.edu, or www.cambridgecohousing.org/Fireside/index.html
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