Monthly Archives: September 2010
My Reading & Other Local News
Fall 2010 Reading Program
Dear Friends:
- Fall is in the air and the gang at Left Bank Books has been busy bringing new books into the collection and enjoying lots of Bookstore Magic moments. Last week alone brought us two memorable ones: A Dartmouth ’64 gentleman came in and told us he was looking for a Dartmouth student interested in acting to give his collection of theater books to because he and his wife were moving to smaller digs. Happily, I knew a student of just such an interest. We made the connection and the books have a new home with a Dartmouth ’14. On the heels of that great connection, a Dartmouth ’78 came in and found a Dartmouth literary anthology that included a story he had written in 1976 when Bill Cook was his teacher. He has been looking for a copy of this story somehow, any way how. And there it was on our shelf!! He was totally surprised and delighted to find it.
SPECIAL EVENT: Artist Reception on Thursday, October 7th from 5:00 to 7:00 for Water Color Painter Jenifer Brown, whose paintings are currently hanging in the shop. This is part of the Art Walk project initiated by downtown merchants to celebrate artists and the venues supporting artists in Hanover. There will be multiple receptions October 7-9 in conjunction with the publishing of a new downtown Hanover map highlighting places where art can be viewed and the 25th Anniversary Celebration of the Hood Museum of Art. Check the Valley News for specific announcements closer to the dates.
As always, our wonderful staff of book-loving folks welcomes you to come browse or buy. We have many gift-quality books. BRING A FRIEND AND PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD ABOUT OUR LITTLE SHOP. For those of you who are far afield and sometimes buy books from Amazon, we would appreciate it if you would check out our Amazon Storefront by following this link: http://www.amazon.com/shops/leftbankbooks. There you will find the books from our collection that are listed for sale on Amazon. You can also keep up with us on Facebook, where we post events, photos, and tidbits of news from the store and about Hanover happenings.
PROGRAMS: Tuesday evenings, 7:30 to 8:30 p.m, with a reception to follow.
September 28—Patrick Gillespie, Poems and Aesopian Fables
Patrick Gillespie of South Strafford will be reading old and new poetry, along with one or two short Aesopian Fables of his own making. He is the proprietor of PoemShape, Vermont’s foremost poetry blog, which recently achieved a quarter of a million visits. The blog includes his own poetry along with general opinion, advice, scansions, and analyses of great poems from Shakespeare and Wordsworth to Frost and Ferlinghetti. When he’s not writing, Patrick works as a carpenter. His first book of poetry will be freely available to all visitors.
October 5, 7 pm—Grassroot Soccer Benefit—Youth Especially Invited!!!
Left Bank Books is proud to host Sarah Callaway and Allen Bourdon, Intern Alumni from Grassroot Soccer, an international 501c3 based in Norwich, VT, whose mission is to use the power of soccer to educate, inspire, and mobilize communities to stop the spread of HIV. Sarah and Allen will share powerful experiences, stories, and photos from their service year in South Africa. Founded by former professional soccer players in 2002, GRS trains African soccer stars, coaches, teachers, and peer educators in the world’s most HIV-affected areas to deliver a highly effective HIV-prevention and life skills curriculum to youth. To raise funds for GRS, children’s books written by GRS co-founder, Ethan Zohn, will be available. Proceeds from Ethan˙s books— Soccer World South Africa and Soccer World Mexico—will go directly to providing GRS HIV-prevention programs to youth in Africa. A reception will follow the presentation.
October 12—Harvest Poetry Reading, with Julia Shipley, Greg Joly, and Dudley Laufman
The love and hard work of creating poems and of the homesteading life bind these three agrarian poets together. Julia Shipley of Craftsbury, VT, is a freelance writer, teacher, subsistence farmer, and caretaker of the Writer’s Retreat. Her chapbook, Herd , won the Sheltering Pines Press Award. She was recently awarded a grant from the Vermont Arts Council to complete a book of personal essays about small-scale agriculture. Greg Joly lives, works, and writes in the southern Green Mountains and has spent the last 20 years coaxing a house and gardens from some 20 vertical acres. He is the editor and printer at Bull Thistle Press, and he believes that writing, like agriculture, should not be a mining operation. Dudley Laufman is a musician, barn dance caller, and poet in Canterbury, NH. He began writing small prose-poem trotters after falling in love with Hemingway. He has published poems in magazines, as well as with his small publishing company, The Wind in the Timothy Press, bringing out limited editions of booklets and hand-bound books.
October 19—Neil Goodwin, We Go As Captives: The Royalton Raid and the Shadow War on the Revolutionary Frontier
The Royalton Raid of 1780 was the last Indian raid in New England. Well-known to Upper Valley history buffs but otherwise obscure, the raid was significant in a series of events that would determine the fate of independent Vermont and the endgame of the Revolutionary War. Neil Goodwin has written the first deeply researched, book-length account of this episode, newly published by the Vermont Historical Society. He is a writer-producer-cinematographer of historical and wildlife documentary programs for Public Television and has two previous books to his credit, The Apache Diaries and Like a Brother , both non-fiction narratives based on unpublished field notes of his anthropologist father, Grenville Goodwin. He is a resident of Royalton, VT, and Cambridge, MA.
October 26—Carol Westberg, Slipstream
Upper Valley poet Carol Westberg will read from Slipstream, her first full-length collection, just published by David Robert Books, and from new work. As David Wojahn says, these poems express the “venerable desire to truthfully inhabit the moment.”
November 9—Ted Degener, Outsider Artists Come to Hanover
Photographer Ted Degener of Cornish, NH, will show video and still photos of self-taught artists created during his 25 years of documenting outsider artists and folk art environments from around the world. Come hear Ted speak about his work, much of which was shown last spring at an exhibit at the Baker-Berry Library at Dartmouth College. Check out this other facet of the founder-proprietor of Hanover’s venerable shop, Folk.
November 16—Season Finale, with Giavanna Munafo and Cynthia Huntington
Join us to hear these Dartmouth faculty members read new work in prose and poetry. A poet for many years, Giavanna Munafo is turning her hand to fiction and will read a short story entitled “After Thomas.” She holds an MFA from the University of Iowa and also studied writing while pursuing her BA and PhD at the University of Virginia. She has taught writing since 1985 at various colleges and universities, and currently teaches in the Women’s and Gender Studies program at Dartmouth. Followers of Cynthia Huntington’s writing will be treated to new work in progress from an untitled manuscript. Her latest poetry collection, The Radiant, won the Levis Prize in 2003; she previously published The Fish-Wife and We Have Gone to the Beach, as well as a prose memoir, The Salt House. Huntington has won numerous prizes and awards, including two National Endowment for the Arts grants in poetry; she served as Chair of the Poetry Jury for the Pulitzer Prizes in Poetry for 2006. Former New Hampshire State Poet Laureate, she is Professor of English at Dartmouth College, where she serves as senior faculty in creative writing.
We look forward to seeing you soon! We appreciate your support!
Nancy Cressman
603-643-4479
Hours: Monday – Saturday, 9:30-5:30PM; Sunday, 11:30-4:00 PM
Tuesdays during the school year – Open by chance
Vermont Poetry Newsletter · September 18 2010
[The Vermont Poetry Newsletter is not issued by me but by Ron Lewis, by whose permission I post this. PLEASE NOTE: I have edited his newsletter so that links are provided rather than text. If I cannot find a link, I will either omit the relevant portion of the newsletter to avoid copyright violations, or I will provide an alternate link. Please contact Ron Lewis if you would like to receive his Newsletter in full. All images are linked.]
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Vermont Poetry Newsletter
Your Poetry & Spoken Word Gateway
In The Green Mountain State
September 18, 2010 (Previous issue: 07/14) – In This Issue:
- About VPN/How To Print
- Newsletter Editor’s Note
- A Note from PoemShape
- Writing Assignment/Suggestion/Exercise/Prompt
- Save Ink and Cash, Go Century Gothic!
- Poet Galway Kinnell
- 2010 Burlington Book Festival
- 2010 Brattleboro Literary Festival
- Middlebury Poetry Workshop, Gary Margolis
- Jeffrey M. Bernstein’s New Book: Interior Music
- Dinner with Norman Dubie
- Vermont Poem by Norman Dubie
- Poet Profile: Norman Dubie
- Poetry Workshop @ Village Square Booksellers
- Poetry as Anthropology
- Quibbles.org
- New Book by Geof Hewitt
- Book Review: The Best American Poetry 2010
- Book Review: Donald Hall’s next book, Interlude
- Poetry Citizenship and Reading Fees
- Crazyhorse Quick-Quote Contest Results
- Impressing the Prospective Boss (Memorize a poem!)
- Blank Verse Definition
- Ponderings: All Things Kerouac
- Poetry Quote – Percy Shelley
- Failbetter Poem
- Linebreak Poem
- Copper Canyon Press Poem
- American Life in Poetry Poems
- US Poets Laureate List
- Vermont Poet Laureates
- US Poet Laureates From Vermont
- New Hampshire Poet Laureates
- US Poet Laureates From New Hampshire
- Contact Info for Publisher of VPN: Ron Lewis
- Vermont Literary Journals
- Vermont Literary Groups’ Anthologies
- Vermont Poetry Blogs
- State Poetry Society (PSOV)
- Year-Round Poetry Workshops in Vermont
- Other Poetry Workshops in Vermont
- Year Around Poetry Writing Centers in Vermont
- Poetry Event Calendar
1.) About the Vermont Poetry Newsletter Network
The Vermont Poetry Newsletter Network is made up of people of all backgrounds, ages and skills who appreciate the craft of poetry and want to promote it in the beautiful state of Vermont. The network consists of a free e-mail list, an eventual web site, workshops, open mics, poetry performances and other literary events. The network provides opportunities to meet local poets, talk about and enjoy poetry, and motivate and inspire yourself in whatever writing projects you are involved.
The mission of the Vermont Poetry Newsletter is to foster the poetry arts community in the Green Mountain State. Its goals are to serve as a resource for and about VT poets; to support the development of individual poets; and to encourage an audience for poetry in Vermont.
2.) Dear Friends of Poetry:
As you may be aware, the Vermont Poetry Newsletter & Poetry Event Calendar is now archived on Patrick Gillespie’s poetry blog Poemshape. This way, you can go back and find interesting items that I brought to your attention, long after they’ve been delivered to you the first time around. An index would also be helpful, so perhaps you might see that tool in a few years.
Well, Bread Loaf is over with and I’m already feeling the withdrawal of live poetry from my life. At least I have many additional poetry books in my library that I hope to read through by this time next year; I have more than enough books for my lifetime, but my fantasy with them is intense. I hope to someday establish a Vermont’s Poets House located in Brandon or Middlebury which will be an entrée into the ageless, borderless conversation that is poetry, so that everyone who has an interest can experience the breadth and diversity of poetry.
Ron Lewis
VPN Publisher
247-5913
3.) Dear Friends of PoemShape:
Yours truly, Patrick Gillespie, author of PoemShape, will be giving a poetry reading (and discussing poetry) on the evening of September 28th, at Left Bank Books, Hanover, New Hampshire.
September 13 2010 ❍ fallen
Poetry and Progress: What Eminem and Abe Lincoln Have in Common
That wasn’t my original title, but I’m trying out a new venue – The Best Damn Creative Writing Blog.
The website has graciously given me the opportunity to write shorter posts in a new format – above all one with an editor. Take a look. See what you think.
