Category Archives: Poetry

New Haven Bioregional Group POTLUCK & POETRY

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SATURDAY, JANUARY 26 • 6:00 p.m.
First Unitarian Universalist Society of New Haven
featuring Evidence of Flossing by Naturalist Jen Payne

On Saturday, January 26, the New Haven Bioregional Group will host author and naturalist Jen Payne for a poetry reading and book signing featuring her book Evidence of Flossing: What We Leave Behind. The event, held at the First Unitarian Universalist Society of New Haven (608 Whitney Avenue, New Haven), begins with a potluck supper at 6PM, followed by the reading at 7PM.

Come listen to a selection of poems that are, at their heart, love poems to the something greater within all of us. Inspired by Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, and Mary Oliver, they explore the human condition juxtaposed to the natural world and the possibility of divine connection.

Evidence of Flossing: What We Leave Behind follows on the heels of Payne’s 2014 well-received book LOOK UP! Musings on the Nature of Mindfulness, and continues a dialogue about our innate connection with nature. Both books will be available at the event, which is free and open to the public.

Jen Payne enjoys writing about our relationships with each other, with our natural world, and with our innate creativity. Installations of her poetry were featured in exhibitions at the Arts Council of Greater New Haven and Kehler Liddell Gallery (New Haven), and her work has been published by The Aurorean, Six Sentences, the Story Circle Network, WOW! Women on Writing, and The Perch, a publication by the Yale Program for Recovery & Community Health. Jen is a member of the Guilford Poets Guild and the Connecticut Poetry Society. You can find more of her work on her blog Random Acts of Writing, www.randomactsofwriting.net.

Connecting New Haveners to their life place, the New Haven Bioregional Group sponsors walks, films, canoe trips, potlucks, and other events to help us connect with our natural and built environment, and to build community and local resilience.

For more information about this event and others, please visit www.newhavenbioregionalgroup.org.

A Guilford Poets Guild Trio: Juliana Harris, Jane Muir, Gordy Whiteman

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Please join the Guilford Poets Guild for a special reading by three of its members: Juliana Harris, Jane Muir, and Guilford Poet Laureate Gordy Whiteman. This special Second Thursday Poetry Series reading will be held on Thursday, November 8 from 6:30 – 8:30 p.m. at the Guilford Free Library.

Juliana Harris has contributed poetry to The New York Times, The Mid-America Poetry Review, The Best Times, Chicken Soup for the Soul and The Kansas City Star, among other publications. A native of Kansas City, Missouri, she has lived in Guilford since 1979 where she is a member of the Guilford Poets Guild. She has recently published a collection of her poems entitled Portraits. She is the author of two novels and is currently at work on her first mystery.

Poet Jane Muir says, “I was born six weeks before the Great Depression. It’s been all uphill since then, financially at least. I’ve seen the world change immensely. In my childhood, whenever a plane flew overhead the whole family would run outside to see it. Now astronauts have been to the moon. I graduated from what was then Connecticut College for Women; now it’s co-ed. I worked in publishing and advertising in New York City and after marriage was, as most women in those days, a stay-at-home mom. Don’t think that wasn’t work! Then I went to work at a local paper, a job I really loved. I moved to Guilford in the mid-nineties, took courses in poetry at Southern Connecticut State University, and joined the Guilford Poets Guild, where currently I’m the oldest member. In age, that is.” Muir’s new book, Bulletin from Suburbia, is due out before Christmas.

Gordy Whiteman was born to Guilford in 1929. He is a member of the Guilford Poets Guild and serves as its co-president with Jane Muir. He is the author of Whitfield Crossing, and Home Town Guilford. Whiteman is a founding member of the Connecticut Coalition of Poets Laureate and serves as Guilford’s first Poet Laureate.

Remember to bring your own poem to share during the Open Mic which is open to accomplished and aspiring poets of all ages wishing to present one original composition to a live audience.

The Guild’s Holiday Roundtable is scheduled for Thursday, December 13. For more information, visit guilfordpoetsguild.org.

The Guilford Free Library is located at 67 Park Street in Guilford. This program is free and open to all. Refreshments will be served. Please register by phone, in person, or online (203) 453-8282, guilfordfreelibrary.org.