Events
Join us at our one-of-a-kind venue
Opening of Restless Forms: Artwork by Lynn Palumbo
Join us Sunday, April 28, from 4-6 PM, to celebrate the opening of Restless Forms, artwork by Lynn Palumbo. Using a limited palette, these multi-media artworks, including several inspired by poems, employ a visual vocabulary of recurring shapes, patterns and textures abstracted from daily observation.
The opening will include a silent auction, a raffle including one of the artist’s works, and a poetry reading featuring Tina Barry, Darcy Smith, Matthew Spireng, Sharon Israel & Bobbi Esmark.
Light refreshments. RSVP requested.
Handmade accordion book with calligraphy and painting after a passage by Margaret Atwood.
The exhibition includes three works inspired by poetry. Palumbo says “I am not a poet but have often turned to poetry as a source of connection and sustenance. I think of both painting and poetry as art forms of synthesis, extracting fragments of everyday life and re-ordering them.”
Facts of Life, by Lynn Palumbo
Facts of Life (above) was inspired by a poem by Eamon Grennan. In the opening line, the narrator states a desire to simply observe, dispassionately. Then follows a list, rather like thumbnail sketches done quickly in a sketchbook. Using cyanotypes and acrylics, Ms. Palumbo captures the immersive quality of such an ordinary/extraordinary moment, accompanied by her hand-lettered version of the poem:
Poem by Eamon Grennon, hand-lettered by Lynn Palumbo
Lynn Palumbo
Lynn Palumbo is a mixed media artist who lives and works in the Hudson Valley. Her artwork has been included in exhibits at Spencertown Academy Art Center, Dutchess Community College, Athens Cultural Center, Lockwood Gallery, Atwater Gallery, SUNY Albany Art Museum, the Hyde Collection, Roxbury Art Center, SUNY Geneseo Lederer Gallery, Starr Library and Red Eft Gallery. She taught college art classes for three decades at Dutchess Community College, Manhattanville College and East Stroudsburg University and currently teaches a drawing class at the Woodstock School of Art.
She earned a BFA in painting/printmaking from Ohio State University and an MFA in painting from SUNY New Paltz. She has done commissioned calligraphy work for a wide range of clients including Vassar College, The Culinary Institute of America, Marist College, The Hastings Center, The Roosevelt Institute and Dutchess Community College.
Complete CV and related artist information at;
www.lynnpalumbo.com
lynn_palumbo_artwork on Instagram
Sweetheart of the Rodeo: Trio Mio
Join us each first Friday of the month for our new listening room concert series! Doors open 7 PM. Music plays from 7:30-9 PM. Open seating. Light refreshments. Limited to 35. Tickets $15-$25.
Second Draft Sunday
Drop in each second Sunday of the month from March-December, 10 AM-12 PM, for a peer-critique workshop. Enjoy coffee, tea, and conversation.
Please note: This is a benefit offered to members at our Nomadic Migrant level and above.
Third Draft Thursday
Join us on Zoom each third Thursday of the month from January-October (4-5:30 PM) for a peer-critique workshop.
Please note: This is benefit to our members at the Nomadic Migrant level and above.
Children's Book Reading with Ira Walzer
Ira Walzer is an author/illustrator of young children’s picture books including “Harold Won’t Fly!: An Awakening Tale” and “Mozzarella Cheese, Please!” He will read and share illustrations from the books, then engage in a Q&A with the audience.
Ira Walzer
Ira Walzer is an author/illustrator of children’s picture books including “Harold Won’t Fly!” and “Mozzarella Cheese, Please!” The author attended master classes at the New School in NYC and the Highlight Foundation in Pennsylvania. He has read his books at Barnes & Noble.com and independent bookstores. He has also submitted an abundance of cartoons to The New Yorker over the years, and patiently waiting for a reply. He resides in Rosendale, NY with his family where there is always fresh mozzarella in the fridge.
About the Books
Harold Won't Fly!: An Awakening Tale
Why won't Harold fly? Harold is a bird who spends his day wishing that he could fly, but is too afraid to try. When fate intervenes and Harold's wish comes true, he sees that the real wish that was granted had very little to do with flying at all. "Harold Won't Fly!" is a gentle, whimsical story of awakening that both children and parents will enjoy together, especially at bedtime.
Mozzarella Cheese, Please!
Mozzarella Cheese, Please! offers up a bird’s eye view of Leonard, the only bird in town who preferred mozzarella cheese rather than worms. A laugh out loud silly tale with a heart worm twist at the end, it will remind us all, that our differences can bring us together and we are all birds of a feather.
Writing the Minimalist Poem
Saturday, June 15, 1-4 PM
Format: In-Person
The wise person says nothing, and the world beats a path to her door,“ Lao Tzu wrote. But the nearly-wise person writes short poems, and a small trickle of devotees trek to her cabin. Let us be nearly-wise together; let’s learn to place as much magnificence as possible in 14 words. Of course, minimalist verse may also be extremely long – for example, if you repeat the same four words 3000 times.
Drawing on nursery rhymes, aphorisms, poetic couplets, proverbs, advertising slogans – and of course haiku – we will work on ways to make tiny poems that stand tall.
with Sparrow
Sparrow
Sparrow studied with Ted Berrigan, Allen Ginsberg, Philip Whalen, William Burroughs , Alice Notley, and other esteemed teachers. He has published 11 books. He lives in a blithe doublewide trailer in Phoenicia, New York with his wife, Violet Snow. Sparrow has written for the Sun magazine since 1981. He’s had four op-Ed pieces in the New York Times. Sparrow has been published in the New Yorker, the American Poetry Review, Reptiles of the Mind, and other magazines. He is currently running for President of the United States.
Book Launch: Linda McCauley Freeman
Join local poet Linda McCauley Freeman as she reads from her second book THE MARRIAGE MANUAL
The Marriage Manual is an intense poetic journey through two marriages, and the lessons the narrator learns about the myth of happily ever after. Relying on both narrative and lyrical sequences, as well as haiku-like explorations, the book takes the reader through the emotional geography of married love and the ever-repeating cycle of romantic love, hope, disappointment, despair, fear, joy and, finally, mature love.
“Read The Marriage Manual and enter love in all its incarnations.”
–Darcy Smith, author of River Skin
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Linda McCauley Freeman is the author of the full-length poetry collections The Marriage Manual (BWP, 2024) and The Family Plot: Poems (Backroom Window Press, 2022) and has been widely published in international journals, including in a Chinese translation. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has been the featured U.S. poet in The Poet Magazine and won Grand Prize in StoriArts’ Maya Angelou poetry contest. Lines from her poem Made in America were selected by Kwame Alexander to use in his Civil Community Poem and are on display at the Civil Rights Memorial Museum in Montgomery, Alabama. She has an MFA from Bennington College and is the former poet-in-residence of the Putnam Arts Council. She lives in Marlboro, NY, where she is a swing dance teacher and a yoga instructor. Follow her at www.LindaMcCauleyFreeman.com, Facebook@LindaMcCauleyFreeman and Twitter@LindaMccFreeman
RSVP Requested
From Page to Stage: Turning Poets into Performers featuring David Gonzalez
This free public performance will begin with Page-to-Stage poets reading one work each and culiminate with Mr. Gonzalez reading a few selections from his inaugural collection of poetry, Soundings (Poetry Box, 2023).
Page-to-Stage Poets
Anique Taylor, Catherine Arra, Darcy Smith, David Budd, Julia Indichova, Mary Ladany, Natasha Williams, Margaret Reynolds, Tina Barry, Theresa Daniel, Tom Caplan, Valerie Linet, Wendy Kagan, Susan Coronel, Nova*Darkstar
This project is made possible with funds from the Statewide Community Regrants Program, a regrant program of the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature and administered by Arts Mid-Hudson.
This project is conceived of and administered by AIM Higher.
Seats are all taken as of 11 AM.
Ian Smith & Rob Stein
Scottish-born Donegal musician Ian Smith performs Wednesday, November 15th at 7pm. Ian’s music has received three Album of the Year nominations from “Irish Music Magazine”. Clannad’s Moya Brennan says Ian "really brings out the Donegal influence in his writing and performance. He embraces the nature of the place with passion.”
Ian will be joined by his friend and musical collaborator Rob Stein, guitarist extraordinaire. Rob brings an artistic passion to Irish and other traditional music from across the pond. He recently returned from a 10 year residency in Ireland: performing and recording and appearing on Ian’s ‘The Woodstock Sessions’ as player, arranger and producer.
Here is Ian performing “Upon Culloden`s Moor” (with Peter Kerlin):
Note: This event is hosted by Jeanne Nametz. Prepay $20 to reserve a seat by November 11th. Seating is limited. Contact Jeanne Nametz to prepay and reserve a spot at : celticnametz@gmail.com.
Lauren Camp & Kasey Jueds
Lauren Camp
New Mexico Poet Laureate Lauren Camp is the author of seven poetry collections, most recently An Eye in Each Square (River River Books, 2023) and Worn Smooth Between Devourings (NYQ Books, 2023).
She was awarded a 2023 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship. Other honors include a Dorset Prize and finalist citations for the Arab American Book Award, the Housatonic Book Award and the Adrienne Rich Award for Poetry. In 2022, she was Astronomer in Residence at Grand Canyon National Park. Lauren is the recipient of fellowships from Denver Botanic Gardens, The Taft-Nicholson Center for Environmental Humanities and Black Earth Institute. She was a visiting writer at the Mayo Clinic, and artist in residence at Lowell Observatory and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.
Her poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, Mid-American Review, Missouri Review, and The Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day.
Her work has been translated into Turkish, Mandarin, Serbian, Arabic, French and Spanish. She teaches for Poetry Out Loud-New Mexico and leads her own community workshops.
Kasey Jueds
Kasey Jueds is a poet living in the Catskill Mountains in New York. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in publications including American Poetry Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Bennington Review, Cave Wall, Cincinnati Review, Colorado Review, Crazyhorse, Denver Quarterly, Narrative, Ninth Letter, Pleiades, Provincetown Arts, River Styx, Salamander, The Southampton Review, Tinderbox, and Waxwing. Keeper, her first book, won the Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize from the University of Pittsburgh Press, and was published by Pitt in fall, 2013. Her second book, The Thicket, was published by Pitt in November, 2021.
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Fourth Friday Open Mic
Join us in community for another fourth Friday open mic ~ Halloween edition! Bring your poems/songs/stories about alter-egos and shadow-sides, costume-optional!
Sign-up starts at 6 PM, with performances to begin at 6:30 PM. Each performer will have 5-10 minutes. (Length of time will depend on turnout). Hope to see and/or hear you there!
Coffee, tea, sparkling water and conversation.
RSVP requested. not required.
Potluck/BYOB optional.
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Autumn (w)Rites
Join Tina Barry, Catherine Arra, Lissa Kiernan, and Lisa St. John for an evening of autumnal poetry. A special off-site event at the newly-renovated Stone Dock Cafe & Golf Course. Come enjoy and celebrate the colors and pleasures of fall!
Mary K O'Melveny: Book Launch
Join us in celebrating the launch of Mary K O'Melveny’s new book of poetry Flight Patterns!
About the Book:
“[These] poems are fierce and tender, political and melodious all at the same time. Like a prayer, they use hidden rhyme for incantation and hypnosis….They will guide you gently if you forgot how to be patient and kind. They will inspire you if you forgot how to have faith….Above all, they will inspire you to be mindful of the earth, generous with nature, caring to birds.”
-Dr. Lucia Cherciu, Professor, English Department, SUNY/Dutchess; Poet Laureate, Dutchess County, NY 2020-2022
“This beautiful, courageous, truthful book makes for delightful reading. Flight Patterns begins with memories rich in the physical joy of nature. Through these contemplative, imaginative and image-filled poems, we experience the poet’s love of birds and her concern for losses in our natural environment.”
-Rhina P. Espaillat, Poet, Short Story Writer, Essayist, Translator, Teacher, Author
“Mary K O’Melveny’s poetry is atmospheric and magical, tender and humorous, revealing and smart.... Highly recommended!”
-Joe Maita, Editor/Publisher, Jerry Jazz Musician
About the Author
Flight Patterns is Mary K O’Melveny’s fourth book of poetry. Mary, a retired labor rights lawyer, lives near Woodstock, New York with her wife Susan. She has been published in many print and on-line literary journals and anthologies and national blog sites. A Pushcart Prize nominee, Mary has also won or been a finalist in several poetry competitions and received award recognition in national and international contests. Her other poetry volumes are A Woman of a Certain Age, Merging Star Hypotheses and Dispatches From The Memory Care Museum. Mary is also a member of the Hudson Valley Women’s Writing Group and her work appears in their anthologies An Apple In Her Hand and Rethinking the Ground Rules. Mary is a co-presenter of writing workshops at Lifespring Saugerties. Her website is: https://www.marykomelvenypoet.com
Free with registration. Please RSVP to reserve your seat. Limited to 35 guests.
Big Brush / Intimate Mark with Barbara Bash
Artist: Barbara Bash
Making a mark with brush & ink awakens the world. Held by the ancient principles of heaven, earth & human, we will engage in a simple ritual to create large spontaneous brushstrokes on paper. Join us for this enlivening and interactive gathering.
Teaching Artist
Barbara Bash
Barbara Bash has been exploring the mixing of Asian sensibility with Western art forms for many years. She guides group experiences of creative aliveness with brush, ink and natural ceremony. Barbara is a Shambhala meditation instructor and has collaborated with musicians, storytellers, and dancers in fresh forms of visual learning.
For more information about her work visit - barbarabash.com
Fourth Friday Open Mic & Ribbon Cutting
Open mic sign-up starts at 6 PM, with performances to begin at 6:30 PM. Each performer will have 5-10 minutes. (Length of time will depend on turnout).
Free with RSVP, below. Hope to see & hear you there!
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Book Launch Party
Join us in celebrating the launch of Lissa Kiernan’s new book of poetry The Whispering Wall!
Free with registration. Celebration to follow.
About the Book:
“Besotted with, weighted with Beauty, The Whispering Wall constructs delicious sonic tangles and brutally candid testimonies. Seductions and menacing of drink, of violence, shadow the speaker’s journey. Guiding all is the gorgeous dreaminess in Kiernan’s voice, pouring into us its alchemies: art itself is the elixir that distracts from, or miraculously surpasses, illusion or myth. A witchy and sardonic wit’s at work, too, in these poems, singing with Stevie Smith, and with Plath. What a great gift of solace and heart this book is.”
– Judith Vollmer, author of THE SOUND BOAT: New and Selected Poems
“Fueled by precise, textured diction, Lissa Kiernan’s compelling collection The Whispering Wall stares down its ghosts. These poems possess a raven wildness. These are poems of vision and verve.”
—Sally Rosen Kindred, author of Where the Wolf
"Elegiac and alive with all five senses, plus whatever sixth sense allows us to perceive the metaphysical mysteries of life and death, Lissa Kiernan's The Whispering Wall limns the mists of grief and memory and delineates the lucidity of having a body."– Kathleen Rooney, author of Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk
“The poems in Lissa Kiernan’s The Whispering Wall walk a tightrope between worlds—grief and praise, beauty and ruin, revelation and secrets, the sacred and the profane, dark humor and wonder—and, in that daringly exhilarating and very tricky journey create another world that merges opposites, that accepts both the willingness and unwillingness to embrace all the different dimensions of a life intensely lived.”
—Christien Gholson, author, All the Beautiful Dead
About the Author
Founding director of The Poetry Barn and AIM Higher, Lissa Kiernan's second poetry collection, The Whispering Wall (2023), won the Homebound Publications Poetry Prize and was a semi-finalist for the Tupelo Press Dorset Prize. In 2018, her first book of prose, Glass Needles & Goose Quills, won the Nautilus Gold for lyric prose. Her first poetry collection, Two Faint Lines in the Violet, was short-listed for the 2015 Foreword Indies and the Julie Suk Award. She lives in West Hurley with her husband, Chris, and a fluctuating number of felines. More at http://lissakiernan.com
Please RSVP to reserve your seat. Limited to 30 guests.
Vessels & Folds: Photographs by Dennis Kiernan
VESSELS & FOLDS: PHOTOGRAPHS BY DENNIS KIERNAN
A posthumous conversation between grandmother, mother, and son in celebration of Pride Month
Dennis Kiernan shot this group of nine still-life photos—sumptuous arrangements of domestic objects—during the last year of his life, while he struggled with memory loss and battled brain cancer. The assemblage represents a love affair with color, shape, composition—and family.
The fabric that serves as backdrop in all the photos was designed by his mother, Alice, and some of the objects were passed down from Thompson’s Antiques, a shop owned by Dennis’ grandmother Bertha Thompson in Jay, Maine. Dennis spent many formative years of his childhood with Bertha in Maine while Alice, newly divorced, worked as a fabric designer in the Edith Reuss Studio in Manhattan.
Astute lighting renders the undulations of fabric and the reflective quality of various forms of ceramic and glass objects three-dimensional. In addition to the art pottery, green glass, and McCoy which Dennis collected, his eye found vessels in unconventional objects, too.
The photograph of his cowboy boots was a signature piece for him. Shot in black and white, with three wilting zinnia blooms thrown over their toes, they are a potent symbol of his coming out, at age 40, in the AIDS-ridden 80s, and the flower-power movement he was embracing late in life.
This is Dennis’s second solo show and first posthumous solo show.
Annie Finch Live
Annie Finch
Come hear how this poet weaves words into spells! Annie Finch is one of our most vital and important American poets and performers. She is the author of six books of poetry, most recently Spells: New and Selected Poems. Her other works include influential essays, books, and anthologies on poetics, feminism, and women’s earth-based spirituality. She is widely recognized for her mesmerizing poetry performances and mastery of poetic craft.
Annie’s poetry has appeared in the New York Times, Poetry Magazine, Paris Review, and the Penguin Book of Twentieth-Century American Poetry, and has been translated into Arabic, Chinese, Farsi, French, Malayalam, Portuguese, Polish, Russian, and Spanish.
Educated at Yale and Stanford University, where she earned her Ph.D, she has lectured at universities including Berkeley, Harvard, and Oxford and performed her poetry across the United States and in India, Mexico, Africa, and throughout Europe.
Suggested Donation: $10
Light refreshments
Limited to 30 guests
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This event is funded in part by Poets & Writers with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
Catherine Arra Book Launch + Open Mic
Join us in celebrating the launch of Catherine Arra’s new book of poetry “Solitude, Tarot & the Corona Blues.“ Free with registration. Light refreshments. An open mic will follow.
About the Book:
Like a third eye, the poems in Catherine Arra's Solitude, Tarot & the Corona Blues reach beyond mere physical sight to the enlightened realm of the spiritual. Finding solace in nature and ancient wisdom, Arra traverses such worldly challenges as Covid-19, a deadly deer virus, and profound relationship disappointments. Her deft lyric poems-including a pantoum-and spirited persona poems act as an intimate portal through which New York's Catskill Mountains and tarot's Major Arcana archetypes spring to life. From "the desert of quarantine" to the dislocation of a broken marriage, Arra's magical collection ushers readers on an illuminating inner journey across "the bridge between seen and unseen," offering the sagacious "reminder to look up. Beyond."
-Jo Pitkin, author of Rendering and Village: RecessionIn pared-down pandemic life, a time for walking, reflecting, and days sustained by nature and a woman's fortitude, Catherine Arra finds "Second Seasons." She writes, "In distilled grace, let us plant a garden for / regret, sorrow, forgiveness, tend the past in beginnings." By turns folksy, lyrical, caustic, and determined, her poems speak with a toughened wisdom that won't suffer fools but knows the truth of love. Her tarot poems offer a master class in persona poetry. Each speaks with a spiky personality to deliver truths that are entertaining, painful, but never wrong. A smart and heartful book.
-Will Nixon, author of My Late Mother as a Ruffed Grouse and The Pocket Guide to Woodstock
About the Author
Catherine Arra is a former English and writing teacher. Her poetry and prose have appeared in numerous literary journals online and in print, and in several anthologies. She is the author of Solitude, Tarot & the Corona Blues, (Kelsay Books, 2022), Deer Love (Dos Madres Press, 2021), Her Landscape, Poems Based on the Life of Mileva Marić Einstein, (Finishing Line Press, 2020), (Women in Parentheses) (Kelsay Books, 2019), Writing in the Ether (Dos Madres Press, 2018) and three chapbooks. A Pushcart nominee, she lives in upstate New York, where she teaches part-time, and facilitates local writing groups. Find her at www.catherinearra.com.
Please RSVP to reserve your seat. Limited to 30 guests.
Spring Equinox Book Launch & Open Mic
Join us in celebrating the Spring Equinox and the release of Cory Nakasue’s new chapbook “The Cosmic Event of the Body.“ Cory’s reading will be followed by a Q&A and Open Mic!
In the event of inclement weather, the date will be changed to April 16.
About the book:
The Cosmic Event of the Body is a collection of poems and other writing that are meant to be felt or performed. They come from bodily situations that include dance, therapy sessions, and attempts to connect the body to narratives, structures, and environments. Cory situates a cosmic dramaturgy as a dismantling tool that can activate dynamic, erotic experience; a way to prepare a body for the penetration of metaphors that catalyze movement. The contents are multivalent in their usage. The poems can inform choreographic scores, somatic rituals, dramaturgical processes, or embodied horoscopes. They can also be enjoyed as poems.
About the Author
Cory Nakasue is a theatre artist and poet whose work includes choreography, dramaturgy, and video. Her original dance and theater pieces have been presented internationally. Her poetry has been published in Aligned Magazine, Summer Stock Journal, The Poetry Distillery, and Gathering Space among others. She is currently the astrologer-in-residence at AIM HIgher, Chronogram, and Opus 40. You can hear her on The Cosmic Dispatch, a weekly live radio show/podcast describing stories from the cosmos.
Cory holds an MA in Choreography and Performance Studies from Middlesex University, London, and did additional graduate work in theatre at California Institute of the Arts. She has maintained a movement education and therapy practice for 20 years called Body Intelligence. She lives in Kingston, New York.
Free with registration. Light refreshments.
Please RSVP to reserve your seat
Robert Burke Warren, Songs & Stories from Cash on Cash
Join us in celebrating the release of Cash on Cash: Interviews and Encounters with Johnny Cash by local writer, performer, teacher and musician Robert Burke Warren.
From Chicago Review Press:
Cash on Cash offers unprecedented insight into one of the most significant American cultural figures of the twentieth century. Throughout a decades-long career, as Cash took risks, embracing new technologies, formats, and attitudes, he cleaved to a simple, core message of unvarnished truth. From hardscrabble Arkansas poor boy to rockabilly roustabout; international fame to drug addiction and disgrace; born again Christian to gimlet-eyed chronicler of spiritual darkness; TV and movie star to Nashville reject; redemption to loss and back again, several times. Cash’s story shines unfiltered light on a journey of archetypal proportions that resonates still.
For more information or to order the book, click here.
About the Author
Robert Burke Warren is a writer, performer, teacher, and musician, author of novel Perfectly Broken and one-man show Redheaded Friend and editor of Cash on Cash: Interviews & Encounters with Johnny Cash. His work appears in Longreads, Salon, Texas Music, Brooklyn Parent, The Woodstock Times, Paste, The Rumpus, The Bitter Southerner, and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, among others. You can find his music on albums by RuPaul, Rosanne Cash, and rockabilly queen Wanda Jackson; The Roots used his tune "The Elephant In the Room" as John McCain's entrance theme on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. In the 90s, he performed the lead in the West End musical Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story. Prior to that he was a globetrotting bass player. He lives in Phoenicia, NY.
Free with registration. Light refreshments. Limited to 30 vaccinated guests.
Book Launch: Joshua Davis, Reversal Spells in Blue and Black
FREE
A former John and Renee Grisham fellow, Joshua Davis holds an MFA from the University of Mississippi, an MFA from Stonecoast at the University of Southern Maine, and an MA from Pittsburg State University. He is the coauthor, with Allison Blevins, of Chorus for the Kill (Seven Kitchens Press, 2022). Recent poems have appeared in The Poetry Distillery, The Museum of Americana, and The Midwest Quarterly. He is a doctoral candidate in American Literature at Ohio University, and he lives near Tampa. Learn more at: https://www.joshuadavispoet.com/
Sample Poem
The Patchwork Horses
After the crack in the rock, after the icy stairs,
after the shelves full of books leading lost-ways,
I find you, half child, half fire. I try to talk,
but you look at your feet. Then you look up,
willows crowding us, their rainy sway
the sway of drowned women.
On the hill, three patchwork horses graze,
two mares and a stallion. I remember that time,
in a storm, when I put my tongue on the swing’s chain.
I taste that taste again. I peer at the mare’s
stitched belly, the twice-darned stallion ears.
You hold out your hand, flame-blue and faint.
This is where you want to rest.
You need my help. (You always did.)
So I set to work, my knees heaped with scraps—
burlap sewn to the broadcloth,
red squares to the paisley, for the withers,
for the forelock, the muzzle and barrel.
The horses on the hill won’t linger.
The needle is sharp and faster than I am,
thread looping forward and back, forward and back.
Once I’ve built you this body, stand on the hill
and graze with your fellows. Stare through the hours
already thickening between us. Forget me.
First published in Monster Verse: Poems Human and Inhuman
Poetic License Opening & Reading: On Zoom
Naoko Oshima & Jerrice Baptiste
‘Escape’ and ‘Quiet Avalanche’ by Naoko Oshima & Beneath by Jerrice Baptiste
Join us for our third annual Poetic License reading. A collaboration with The Arts Society of Kingston, poets will read alongside images of the works their poems inspired.
Featured Poets
Catherine Arra, Jerrice Baptiste, Norma Ketzis Bernstock, Michelle Bonczek, Alma Cooper, Gabby Gilliam, Karen L. George, Joan Leotta, Jim Lonergan, Alexander Perez, Fay L. Loomis, Tamara Neeley, Nancy Graham, Pat Hale, Lynn Houston, Brian Kates, Robbi Nester, Will Nixon, Margaret Cliggett, Rachel Van Sickle, Susan Vespoli, Laurie Kuntz, Tina Barry
Please RSVP to receive the Zoom link.
Chiaroscuro: Poems for the Solstice
Yule or the Winter Solstice is the longest night and shortest day of the year, when in Norse mythology, the sun goddess gives birth to her daughter self and is reborn.
Celebrate and support her growth with readings from brand new poetry collections by three of our area’s most exciting women poets. Books will be available for sale and signing after the reading. Light refreshments will be served.
Featuring:
Tina Barry, reading from Beautiful Raft (Big Table Publishing)
Gretchen Primack, reading from Visiting Days (Willow Books)
Ana C.H. Silva, reading from One Cupped Hand Above the Other (Dancing Girl Press)
The Readers
Gretchen Primack is a poet and educator living in New York's Hudson Valley. She has taught and/or administrated with prison education programs (mostly college) since 2005. She's the author of three poetry collections: Visiting Days (Willow Books), Kind (Post Traumatic Press), and Doris' Red Spaces (Mayapple Press), and a chapbook, The Slow Creaking of Planets (Finishing Line 2007). She co-wrote The Lucky Ones: My Passionate Fight for Farm Animals with Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary co-founder Jenny Brown (Penguin Avery 2012). Her poetry publication credits include The Paris Review, Prairie Schooner, Ploughshares, FIELD, Poet Lore, The Massachusetts Review, The Antioch Review, New Orleans Review, Rhino, Tampa Review, and many others journals and anthologies. Gretchen is a passionate advocate for the rights and welfare of non-human animals and lives with several of them, along with a beloved human named Gus.
Ana C. H. Silva lives in East Harlem, NYC and West Shokan, NY. Her poems are in Podium, Rogue Agent, The Mom Egg Review, the nth position, Snow Monkey, Chronogram, StepAway Magazine, Anemone Sidecar, Between the Lines, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and Shantih Journal. Ana created “Olive Couplets,” an Olive, NY community-based poetry work, and “Lines in the Woods,” an outdoor, interactive poetry installation at the CHHS in Rosendale, NY. Ana curates the MER online Gallery. She won the inaugural Rachel Wetzsteon Memorial Poetry Prize at the 92nd St. Y Unterberg Poetry Center. Her 2019 poetry chapbook, One Cupped Hand Above the Other, is with Dancing Girl Press.
Tina Barry is the writer and curator of “The Virginia Project,” a written-word and visual arts collaboration and traveling exhibition. Barry’s short fiction and poetry appear in numerous literary magazines and anthologies, including International Poetry on the Oppression and Empowerment of Women, and Nasty Women Poets: An Unapologetic Anthology of Subversive Verse. She is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee and has received several Best of the Net nods. Barry is a teaching artist at The Poetry Barn and Gemini Ink, and the author of Mall Flower: Poems and Short Fiction.
Book Launch: The Thicket by Kasey Jueds
October 29 Update: This event is currently at half capacity. RSVP today to reserve your seat.
The Thicket opens into intimate encounters with the more-than-human world—rivers, birds, stones—and with a “you” that is not a person, necessarily, but also not not a person: maybe God, maybe an aspect of the self, maybe neither or both. Often speaking of/to the small or overlooked (weeds by a roadside, an abandoned silo), the poems orient themselves toward edges, transitional spaces like the one where fields shift into woods. Where does one body stop? The Thicket takes an interest in becoming, one thing flowing into something else.
"In Kasey Jueds’s gorgeous new book, The Thicket, every flower, thorn, and body of water is both archetype and fact. These rich lyrics act as doors to a transformation like sleep or like season. Jueds’s poems are like living inside a spell, a magic that is both story and circle. With her close attention to nature and stunning litanies, she enchants the natural world around us and reminds us that through all of our painful changes, ‘how long it takes to become human again.’ Read this book and let yourself be spellbound."
—Traci Brimhall, author of Come the Slumberless To the Land of Nod
More Info & Pre-Order at University of Pittsburgh Press→
Kasey Jueds is the author of two collections of poetry, both from the University of Pittsburgh Press: Keeper, which won the 2012 Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize, and The Thicket. She lives in New York State’s Catskill Mountains.
FREE | LIGHT REFRESHMENTS
LIMITED TO 30
INDOORS
PROOF OF VACCINATION REQUIRED
COMPLIANCE WITH CURRENT CDC GUIDELINES FOR ULSTER COUNTY RE: MASKS
RSVP BY NOVEMBER 6, 4 PM ET
More Info & Pre-Order at University of Pittsburgh Press→
Chinese Brush Painting with Linda Schultz
Chinese Brush Painting with Linda Schultz
Chinese Brush Painting is a simplistic and meditative way to paint. Using the “Four Treasures”: the brush, the ink, the ink stone, and the paper, one can learn the painting techniques to create the “Four Gentlemen”: the bamboo, the orchid, the plum and the chrysanthemum. Each “Gentleman” introduces a new stroke or idea and reinforces techniques already learned. Come and watch a demonstration and try your hand at it.
Linda Schultz is a retired art educator. She holds an MS in art education from the State University of New York and a Certificate of Completion from the Art Farm Gallery for Studies in Chinese Brush painting studying with Professor I-Hsiung Ju. Additionally, she has studied with Leigh Wen in Albany, NY and with master painters at the Art Institute in Jang Yin, China.
Seats are limited. RSVP to hello@poetrybarn.org to reserve.
Zoom Earth Day Reading & Celebration
The solace and restoration offered by the natural world has become ever more important during this pandemic year. Please join us for a word weaving celebrating our glorious mountain valley with Hudson Valley poets and writers.
Second Draft Sunday
Short-Distance Migrant members and above are invited to drop in each second Sunday for an informal peer-critique workshop. Bring several copies of a work-in-progress, or print out at the barn. Enjoy coffee, tea, and conversation.
Held on Zoom from January-March
Second Draft Sunday
Short-Distance Migrant members and above are invited to drop in each second Sunday for an informal peer-critique workshop.* Bring several copies of a work-in-progress, or print out at the barn. Enjoy coffee, tea, and conversation.
* Held on Zoom from January-March.
Second Draft Sunday
“Short-Distance Migrant” members (and above) are invited to drop in each second Sunday from May through December for an informal peer-critique workshop. Bring several copies of a work-in-progress, or print out at the barn. Coffee, tea, and water provided.
Upstate Art Weekend
UPSTATE ART WEEKEND is a new initiative celebrating creative spaces in the Hudson Valley, from August 29-30, 2020. The two-day event incorporates sixteen arts organizations situated between Garrison and Hudson, NY. Founded by Stoneleaf Retreat, Upstate Arts Weekend provides a curated road map for those wanting to safely explore and enjoy art upstate.
Second Draft Sunday
Members are invited to drop in each second Sunday from May through November for an informal peer-critique workshop. Bring several copies of a work-in-progress, or print out at the barn. Coffee, tea, and water provided.
Second Draft Sunday
Members are invited to drop in each second Sunday from May through November for an informal peer-critique workshop. Bring several copies of a work-in-progress, or print out at the barn. Coffee, tea, and water provided.
Second Draft Sunday
Members at the $60+ levels are invited to drop in each second Sunday from May through November for an informal peer-critique workshop. Bring several copies of a work-in-progress, or print out at the barn. Coffee, tea, and water provided.
Second Draft Sunday
Members at the $60+ levels are invited to drop in each second Sunday from May through November for an informal peer-critique workshop. Bring several copies of a work-in-progress, or print out at the barn. Coffee, tea, and water provided.
Second Draft Sunday
Members at the $60+ levels are invited to drop in each second Sunday from May through November for an informal peer-critique workshop. Bring several copies of a work-in-progress, or print out at the barn. Coffee, tea, and water provided.
The Light Will Return: Poems for the Solstice
Yule or the Winter Solstice is the longest night and shortest day of the year, when in Norse mythology, the sun goddess gives birth to her daughter self and is reborn.
Celebrate and support her growth with readings from brand new poetry collections by three of our area’s most exciting women poets. Books will be available for sale and signing after the reading. Light refreshments will be served.
Featuring:
Tina Barry, reading from Beautiful Raft (Big Table Publishing)
Gretchen Primack, reading from Visiting Days (Willow Books)
Ana C.H. Silva, reading from One Cupped Hand Above the Other (Dancing Girl Press)
The Readers
Gretchen Primack is a poet and educator living in New York's Hudson Valley. She has taught and/or administrated with prison education programs (mostly college) since 2005. She's the author of three poetry collections: Visiting Days (Willow Books), Kind (Post Traumatic Press), and Doris' Red Spaces (Mayapple Press), and a chapbook, The Slow Creaking of Planets (Finishing Line 2007). She co-wrote The Lucky Ones: My Passionate Fight for Farm Animals with Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary co-founder Jenny Brown (Penguin Avery 2012). Her poetry publication credits include The Paris Review, Prairie Schooner, Ploughshares, FIELD, Poet Lore, The Massachusetts Review, The Antioch Review, New Orleans Review, Rhino, Tampa Review, and many others journals and anthologies. Gretchen is a passionate advocate for the rights and welfare of non-human animals and lives with several of them, along with a beloved human named Gus.
Ana C. H. Silva lives in East Harlem, NYC and West Shokan, NY. Her poems are in Podium, Rogue Agent, The Mom Egg Review, the nth position, Snow Monkey, Chronogram, StepAway Magazine, Anemone Sidecar, Between the Lines, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and Shantih Journal. Ana created “Olive Couplets,” an Olive, NY community-based poetry work, and “Lines in the Woods,” an outdoor, interactive poetry installation at the CHHS in Rosendale, NY. Ana curates the MER online Gallery. She won the inaugural Rachel Wetzsteon Memorial Poetry Prize at the 92nd St. Y Unterberg Poetry Center. Her 2019 poetry chapbook, One Cupped Hand Above the Other, is with Dancing Girl Press.
Tina Barry is the writer and curator of “The Virginia Project,” a written-word and visual arts collaboration and traveling exhibition. Barry’s short fiction and poetry appear in numerous literary magazines and anthologies, including International Poetry on the Oppression and Empowerment of Women, and Nasty Women Poets: An Unapologetic Anthology of Subversive Verse. She is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee and has received several Best of the Net nods. Barry is a teaching artist at The Poetry Barn and Gemini Ink, and the author of Mall Flower: Poems and Short Fiction.