Monday, December 29, 2008
We Three Invite You!
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
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
Thursday, December 25, 2008
George & Ruth: Songs & Letters of the Spanish Civil War: benefit at 8 PM April 18 in Watertown, MA!
Monday, November 17, 2008
Len Solo and Barbara Thomas at Fireside Nov. 18th!
THE FIRESIDE READING SERIES
MOLLY LYNN WATT, CURATOR
Tuesday, November 18, 2008 • 7:30 pm
Len Solo and Barbara Thomas
LEN SOLO’s primary work over the years has been in education. From 1974 to 2001 he was the principal of the Graham & Parks Alternative Public School in Cambridge and was the interim principal of Cambridge’s high school, CRLS, for over a year. Currently, he’s an educational consultant, working to support school principals and teacher leaders. Some of his educational writings have been collected into a book, Alternative, Innovative and Traditional Schools: Some Personal Views. Len’s latest book of poetry is The Magic of Light, published in September 2008. His first poetry book, Landscape of the Misty Eye, was published in 2002. Co-written with Steve Weitzman, the book reflects the cycle of the seasons starting and ending in the spring. His second book Rooted in Place, came out in 2004. In addition to writing poems, Len is working on a collection of short stories and on a book about the award-winning and nationally recognized Graham & Parks Alternative Public School.
BARBARA THOMAS, a former English and Reading teacher for thirty-five years, now devotes her time to poetry and writing. She has recently published a chapbook, Seduced by Sighs of Trees, Cloudkeeper Press 2008, and has published poems in Lalitamba, Writing Nature, The Wilderness House Literary Review, and The Istanbul Literary Review. She has read her poems at the Blacksmith House, Borders Bookstore, Porter Square Bookstore, and the Cambridge Public Library and she teaches nature writing for the Appalachian Mountain Club. Barbara lives in Cambridge with two gorgeous orange cats, Kalliope and Sofia.
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.)
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
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Poets read at NoCa Art Opening!
Thursday
November 13
6:00-7:30 P.M.
Poetry reading begins
at 6:30 P.M. featuring
Philip E. Burnham
Irene Koronas
Barbara Thomas
Molly Lynn Watt
NoCa Arts
is a group of
professional visual
and performing artists
who live or work in
North Cambridge
and have
a strong commitment
to the neighborhood
and community.
O'Neill Branch Library
70 Rindge Avenue
Cambridge,
Massachusetts
Credit: Bobby Brown: Green Beard Mixed Media Mask
Friday, November 7, 2008
Shadow People:Poems by Molly Lynn Watt Reviewed by Hugh Fox
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Fireside Readings Series Schedule 2008-2009
Tuesday, September 23, 7:30
Bagel Bards
Tuesday, October 28, 7:30
Chris Brandt and John Hildebidle
Tuesday, November 18, 7:30
Len Solo and Barbara Thomas
Tuesday, January 20, 7:30
Suzanne Berger and Ifeany Menkiti
Tuesday, February 17, 7:30
Marion Kilson and Florence Ladd
Tuesday, March 24, 7:30
Ellen Steinbaum and David Surette
Tuesday, April 21, 7:30
Dudley Laufman and Barbara Morrison
Tuesday, May 19, 7:30
Abbott Ikeler and Mignon Ariel King
Now in our tenth season, the Fireside Reading Series holds readings on one Tuesday each month at 7:30.
The readings begin 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.)
Writers are welcome to bring a short work in progress to read at our open mike and any published works they may have to sell after the readings. Please bring handouts for upcoming events.
The Fireside Reading Committee is Molly Lynn Watt, curator, Jenise Aminoff and Dan Lynn Watt, webmagicians, Julie Rochlin, Lolita Paiwonsky and many others on logistics, and the writers who come month after month. Thank you all for contributing!
The readings are held at Cambridge Cohousing, 175 Richdale Ave, Cambridge MA 02140. It is 3 blocks from the Red Line stop at Porter Square. A request for “parking consideration” from the City of Cambridge allows out-of-town visitors to park in resident only spaces 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 for more information or check out the website at www.cambridgecohousing.org/fireside/index.html.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Where You Will Find Me!
Denise Bergman, H. Susan Freireich, Molly Lynn Watt, Central Square Library, Cambridge
November 18, 2008 Len Solo and Barbara Thomas Feature at Fireside, 175 Richdale Ave, Cambridge, Molly Lynn Watt, curator.
November 13, 2008 6:30 pm NoCa Poetry Reading at O’Neill Branch Library as part of art reception opening: Philip E. Burmham, Irene Koronas, Barbara Thomas, Molly Lynn Watt.
October 18, 2008 Chris Brandt and John Hildebidle feature at Fireside Reading, 175 Richdlae Ave., Cambridge, Molly Lynn Watt, curator
October 6, 2008 7:00 pm Pub Reading at James’ Gate Pub by Doug Holder, Elizabeth Quinlan, Christy Page, Molly Lynn Watt.
September 23, 2008 7:30 pm 2 dozen Bagel Bards will start off the tenth season of the Fireside Series celebrating the BagelBard Anthology #3, introduction by Regie O. Gibson, edited by Molly Lynn Watt.
August 4, 2008 10 AM: On the Wings of Song: Music in the Civil Rights Movement, stories of We Shall Overcome, Which Side Are You On? and other songs moving the Civil Rights Movement Along: Graham & Barbara Dean & Molly & Dan Lynn Watt
&
7:30 PM: Personal Stories of the Civil Rights Movement, Molly was active in the Civil Rights Movement Directing the North/South Smokey Mountain Workcamp at Highlander Center and Dan supporting voter registration in Fayette County, Tennessee. Dan & Molly Lynn Watt @ World Fellowship Center, Conway, New Hampshire
August 3, 2008 10 AM: The Civil Rights Movement:1955-1968 8/3, a multimedia portrayal from Montgomery Bus Boycott of '55-through Birmingham & Selma to the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968. Dan & Molly
&
4 PM: Songs of the Movement: Dan & Molly Lynn Watt
@ World Fellowship Center, Conway, New Hampshire
May 27, 2008 Fireside Readings featuring the Jamaica Plain Carpenter Poets in a Pub-Style Reading featuring poems about woodworking, beer and burgers. As always, a short open mic. 175 Richdale Ave., Cambridge. Molly Lynn Watt, curator
April 29, 2008 Fireside Readings, Molly Lynn Watt curator, Julie Rochlin and Tom Daley reading poetry at 7:30 PM, starts with short open mic. 175 Richdale Ave., Cambridge
April 26, 2008 Molly Lynn Watt, Irene Koronas, Philip Burnham, Jr read at 12 noon at Porter Books as the first event for NoCa's Open Studios weekend.
April 25, 2008, George & Ruth: Songs & Letters of the Spanish Civil War, Molly and Dan Lynn Watt with Tony Saletan & Sylvia Miskoe at 9:30-11 PM at NEFFA in Mansfield, MA (Admission free with festival ticket)
April 25, 2008 Molly with Dan Lynn Watt & Alice Flanagan singing Woody Guthrie's songs "Why, Oh Why" and "Mail Myself to You" with the Folksong Society of Greater Boston's Bound for Glory Performance at 8-9:30 at NEFFA in Mansfield, MA (Admission free with festival ticket)
April 18, 2008, George & Ruth: Songs & Letters of the Spanish Civil War, Molly and Dan Lynn Watt with Tony Saletan & Sylvia Miskoe @ 8 o'clock at First Parish in Watertown, 35 Church Street, Watertown, MA.
April 12, 2008 Molly Lynn Watt, one of 8 poets reading their respective poems from the 2008 Poets Guide to New Hampshire at the Toadstool Bookstore in Peterborough, NH.
April 10, 2008 Molly Lynn Watt and Irene Koronas read at 6:30-7:30 at the O'Neil Library in North Cambridge at the opening reception of the exhibit of the North Cambridge Art Association (NoCa).
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Quinlan, Watt, Holder & Page read at James's Gate Pub Oct.6th
Elizabeth Quinlan: author of ‘Promise Supermarket
(Ibbetson Street press 2008)
Molly Lynn Watt: author of ‘Shadow People’
(Ibbetson Street Press 2007)
Doug Holder: author of
‘The Man In The Booth in the Midtown Tunnel’
(Cervena Barva Press 2008)
Christy Page: Jamaica Plain Carpenter Poet
(poems published in ‘Break Time’ anthology 2007)
WHERE: James's Gate Restaurant & Pub
5-11 McBride Street, Jamaica Plain, MA
WHEN: Oct. 6th, 2008, Monday Night, 6:30
The pub will be open, people can order drinks or food.
Reading at 7PM in the restaurant
Directions to James’s Gate www.jamessgate.com
Elizabeth Quinlan has been a member of The William Joiner Center for the Study of War and Social Consequences for the past eleven years. She received an Honors in Creative Writing from U. Mass /Boston. She was a finalist for the Richards Snyder Memorial Poetry Prize. She is a visual artist, specializing in the Book Arts and has taught art for over thirty years.
Molly Lynn Watt curates the monthly Fireside Reading Series, writes for the Occasional Moose, chairs the monthly Poetry Roundtable at HILR, and she co-created and performs in Ruth’s Letters in performances of George and Ruth, Songs and Letters of the Spanish Civil War, she developed with her husband,
Daniel Lynn Watt. Her poems, stories, memoir pieces and essays appear in books, journals and magazines. She is the editor of Bagels and the Bards Anthologies.
Doug Holder is the founder of Ibbetson Street Press of Somerville, Mass; the co-founder of the Somerville News Writer’s Festival, the curator of the Newton Free Library Poetry Series, book Review editor of the Wilderness House Literary Review, the Arts Editor for The Somerville News, and the Boston editor for Poesy.
Holder’s other collections of poetry are: No One dies at the Au Bon Pain (sunny outside) and Of All the Meals I Had Before, (Cervena Barva Press).
Christy Page is a member of the Jamaica Plain Carpenter Poets,
as well as a Co-owner of the James’s Gate Restaurant & Pub
(home to the Carpenter Poets). He has designed and built Irish Pubs in the Boston area. He was born and raised in Dublin, where his family were performers: dancers and actors. His poems are included in Break Time the JP Carpenter Poet’s Anthology, focusing on the diversity of the James’s Gate regulars,as well as the art of carpentry.
Fireside hosts Chris Brandt & John Hildebidle
CHRIS BRANDT is a writer and activist. Also a translator, carpenter, furniture designer, and theatre worker. He teaches poetry at Fordham University. He is proud to have been found guilty on May 29, 2008, of exercising free speech (sic) at the U.S. Supreme Court, and sentenced to ten days (suspended) and a year's probation. His poems and essays have been published in magazines, journals, and anthologies, including Off the Cuffs: Poetry by and About the Police (Soft Skull, edited by Jackie Sheeler); Lateral (Barcelona); El signo del gorrion (Valladolid); La Jornada (Mexico); Phatitude, Appearances; The Unbearables; National Poetry Magazine of the Lower East Side; Liqueur 44 (Paris) and Crimes of the Beats. His translations of Cuban fiction have been published in The New Yorker and many other places. Translations of contemporary Cuban poetry will be included in a Univ. of CA Berkeley anthology to be published in 2009. Web links: www.poetz.com/2001/brandt.htm, www.witnesstorture.org/5.30.brandt
JOHN HILDEBIDLE survived a peripatetic childhood, a Harvard education, and eight years as a teacher in a public junior high. He has finally surfaced on the faculty of MIT (teaching English -- a true adventure), happily lives a (literal) stone's throw from Cambridge Cohousing and co-founded the Fireside Reading Series with Jenise Aminoff in the spring of 2000. His newest book is Signs, Translations due any instant from Salmon Publishing in County Clare, Ireland. His publications include a study of Henry David Thoreau and another of 20th century Irish fiction, Five Irish Writers: The Errand of Keeping Alive plus several books of poetry and Stubbornness: A Field Guide a work of fiction. web.mit.edu/lit/www/dutchiamb/
The reading is held at Cambridge Co-Housing at 175 Richdale Ave, Cambridge, MA 02140, 3 blocks from the Red Line stop at Porter Square. A parking consideration request to the City of Cambridge allows out-of-towners attending to park on Richdale Avenue between 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
Cambridge Co-Ho hosts the Bagel Bards at Fireside
“The genius of this anthology is as simple and as wholesome as a bagel," wrote Tomas O’Leary.
Bagel Bards are poets who before deigning to open their eyes on Saturday mornings, find themselves drifting into Davis Square’s Au Bon Pain looking for a shot of literary camaraderie served up with coffee and croissants. The informal group has a vibrant, vacillating and ever-increasingly membership. Local poet-heroes, Doug Holder and Harris Gardner, who started the group four years ago, host each Saturday with welcome and wit. The group is as diverse as the city’s population and members write poems running the gamut of ways to yowl, weep and yearn in today’s world: some shout, others whisper, some rant, others sing. This reading by a line-up by Bagel Bards celebrating the anthology edited by Molly Lynn Watt, with an introduction by Regie O’Hare Gibson, designed by Steve Glines, and published by Ibbetson Street Press.
“O bard, a bagel has become a poem” wrote Afaa Michael Weaver.
The two dozen poets reading are Beatriz Alba del Rio, Pamela Annas, Barbara Bialick, Martha Boss, Pat Brodie, Anne Brudevold, Philip E. Burnham, Ann Carhart, Jane Chakravarty, Tom Daley, Harris Gardner, Steve Glines, John J. Hildebidle, Irene Koronas, Mignon Ariel King, Linda Larson, Nathaniel Mayes, Shannon O’Conner, Tomas O’Leary, Lolita Paiwonsky, Zvi A. Sesling, Ellen Steinbaum, Barbara Thomas & Molly Lynn Watt.
Come at 7 to set-up nosh and schmooze. Following the reading you are invited to mingle with the Bards at a wine and cheese reception. (A donation of $3 is requested to help with the cost.) The reading is held in the living room in front of the Fireplace of Cambridge Co-Housing at 175 Richdale Ave, Cambridge, MA 02140. CCH is 3 blocks from the Redline at Porter Square. A parking consideration was requested from the City of Cambridge from 6:30-10:30 pm permitting visitors to park in resident only permit spaces. Call Molly Lynn Watt, at 617-354-8242 or Jenise Aminoff, at 617-576-2004 for more information or check out the website at http://www.cambridgecohousing.org/fireside/index.html.
The Fireside Committee is Molly Lynn Watt, curator, Jenise Aminoff and Dan Lynn Watt, webmagicians, Julie Rochlin, Lolita Paiwonsky and many others on logistics, and the writers who come month after month.
Thank you for contributing!