December Write on the Dot reading

Write on the Dot is a poetry and fiction reading series featuring UMass-Boston MFA candidates and writers from the Dorchester community.

From a Boston.com article on the inaugural session:

The reading series was started by Molly McGuire and Aaron Devine, both students at UMass Boston's creative writing MFA program. UMass already showcases its writers' work at the Breakwater reading series in Coolidge Corner (which also hosts BU and Emerson students), but Write on the Dot is meant to bridge the gap between UMass Boston and the Dorchester community. "UMass is unique in that it's a commuter school. It's in Dorchester, but it's on that peninsula …It feels a little disconnected from the community sometimes," said Devine, who added that the university already has many programs that partner with Boston Public Schools and the public library to create that connection.

This time around, it's Sam Cha, Aaron Devine, Johnny Diaz, Mariya "Morie" Deykute, and Christopher Kain. Sunday, December 11, 2011, 6-7:30 pm, at The Blarney Stone, 1505 Dorchester Avenue. RSVP at http://www.facebook.com/events/239184296149172.

Bergman, Freireich, and Watt at Cambridge Public Library

Thursday, December 8, at 7 pm, at the Central Square Library, 45 Pearl Street, Cambridge.
Stay for refreshments following the reading.

Denise Bergman is the author of Seeing Annie Sullivan, poems based on the early life of Helen Keller’s teacher. She conceived and edited City River of Voices, an anthology of urban poetry, and was the author of Keyhole Poems, a sequence that combines the history of twelve specific Cambridge locations with their present use. Denise was poetry editor of Sojourner, A Women’s Forum, and hosted a CCTV show “Women in the Arts.” She received several grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the Puffin Foundation. Her poems have been widely published and nominated for a Pushcart Prize. An excerpt of her poem "Red", about a slaughterhouse, is permanently installed in Dana Park.

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 is the author of a book of poems, Shadow People, sharing journeys as a progressive educator, singer and activist. She is working on a manuscript, On the Wings of Song, set the Civil Rights Movement of 1963. She edited volumes 1-4 of Bagels with the Bards, is poetry editor for the HILR Review, and a frequent contributor to literary journals. She supports voices of others as curator for the monthly Fireside Readings at Cambridge Cohousing, workshop leader for The Kent Street Writers and Poet Laureate of HILR. She received residencies from Soul Mountain and Lake Atitlan Writer’s Workshop. She and participates in NoCA Open Studios and The Joiner Center Writing Community.

December 1: Ferry Reading in Boston

Eminent poet and translator David Ferry will read this Thursday, December 1, at 7:00 p.m. at Suffolk University’s Modern Theater, 525 Washington Street, downtown Boston. Ferry’s most recent award is the 2011 Ruth B. Lilly Prize, from the Poetry Foundation, for “lifetime career achievement.” The most recent book of his poems is Of No Country I Know, New and Selected Poems and Translations. His new collection of poems, Bewilderment, will be published in 2012. His books of translation include Gilgamesh, A New Rendering in English Verse; the Odes of Horace; the Epistles of Horace; the Eclogues of Virgil; and the Georgics of Virgil. A Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Suffolk University, he is currently translating the Aeneid of Virgil.

SCOTT REVIEW OF ANONYMOUS

what is surely one of the more effective openings in recent reviewery, A. O. Scott writing for the New York Times begins his critique of the new Shakespeare costume thriller Anonymous with this account: "a vulgar prank on the English literary tradition,a travesty of British history and a brutal insult to the human imagination. Apart from that, it’s not bad." He is more generous later on: "My point is that it might be a mistake to suppose that the director of 10,000 B.C. — to mention only the most salient example — should be taken as a reliable guide to history." Oh come on, Mr. Scott; that may be part of your point, but not the whole of it. The full review, which asks the question "How well does the director manager this complex question?" of a film which asks, "How could a commoner write such great plays?", appears at http://movies.nytimes.com/2011/10/28/movies/anonymous-by-roland-emmerich-review.html.

Nota bene: Here is an excerpt (from an article on the NPR website) from Mark Twain's pamphlet response to the incredulity exhibited by skeptics of Shakespeare's authorship:

is surmised by the biographers that the young Shakespeare got his vast knowledge of the law and his familiar and accurate acquaintance with the manners and customs and shop-talk of lawyers through being for a time the CLERK OF A STRATFORD COURT: just as a bright lad like me, reared in a village on the banks of the Mississippi, might become perfect in knowledge of the Behring Strait whale-fishery and the shop-talk of the veteran exercisers of that adventure-bristling trade through catching catfish with a 'trot-line' Sundays."

FRUITLANDS CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

The Fruitlands Museum -- a beautiful facility, with outdoor and indoor exhibits occupying a hilltop location in Harvard, Mass. -- in partnership with the Concord Poetry Center, is inviting poets to come seek inspiration in a landscape rich in natural and human history. Fruitlands is soliciting original poems written about and on the museum grounds during fall and winter 2011-2012.

From the program description page: "Anything that can be seen or experienced on the 210-acre property from outside the museum buildings is an appropriate subject. Ten to fifteen poems will be selected by a jury of poets and museum staff. Poets whose poems are selected will be invited to share their work at a Plein Air Poetry Celebration at Fruitlands on the afternoon of Sunday, May 6. Selected poems may also be compiled in a chapbook and/or audio recorded."

Email submissions to poetry@fruitlands.org. Submission deadline is January 15, 2012. Rules and guidelines at http://www.fruitlands.org/sites/default/files/flyer%20for%20poets.pdf; sign-up sheet at http://www.fruitlands.org/sites/default/files/plein%20air%20poetry%20signup.pdf. If you have questions call 978.456.3924 x291 or email poetry@fruitlands.org.
_ _

The photo above was taken on a visit to Fruitlands in October 2011, and is directed toward the rise of Mt. Wachusett to the west. Thoreau, addressing this peak, noted that "like me [thou] standest alone without society", and "know'st not shame nor fear."

Bosch & Pomerantz at Suffolk

Daniel Bosch and Marsha Pomerantz will be reading at the Suffolk University Poetry Center, on Wednesday, November 16, 2011 at 7 p.m.

Marsha Pomerantz’s collection The Illustrated Edge is out this year from Biblioasis. Her poems
and prose have appeared in journals in the US, UK, and Israel, and she has translated poetry, short fiction, and a novel from . She has enjoyed support from the MacDowell Colony and the Massachusetts Cultural Council, but is happy to have a day job at the Harvard Art Museums.

Daniel Bosch's book Crucible was published by Other Press in 2002. His poems, translations, and
reviews have appeared in Salamander, Poetry, The New Republic, the Times Literary Supplement, Slate, Agni, Kill Author, Berfrois, Beloit Poetry Journal, ArtsFuse, and many other publications. He was the Director of Writing & Publishing at Walnut Hill School for the Arts for seven years, and he now teaches expository writing at Tufts University.

Co-sponsored by Salamander magazine and the Suffolk University Poetry Center. Sawyer Library, Third Floor, 73 Tremont Street, Boston MA.

A ROBERT FROST PLAY IN LOWEL

. "This Verse Business" is a one-man play starring Gordon Clapp – best known for his Emmy-winning role as Detective Greg Medavoy on NYPD Blue and his Tony-nominated role as Dave Moss in the 2005 Broadway revival of Glengarry Glen Ross -- as Robert Frost, the great American poet who “barded” around the country for forty-five years with his dry wit and “promises to keep.” Show runs from 10/20 to 11/13; online at http://www.merrimackrep.org/season./show.aspx?sid=101. The Merrimack Repertory Theatre is in downtown Lowell, just a short ride away on the Commuter Rail.