Sampler: Poems from “Celebration of Women Poets”
Big thanks to everyone who came to Newark Library to hear “A Celebration of Women Poets” on Saturday, March 25th. Great turn-out! Special thanks to all who read. An eclectic & electric reading of poems by women, lovingly performed.
Susan Peiffer reads
Blessings, Lindsey Warren, Newark Library assistant, for organizing. Here’s a list of readings as requested and thanks, everyone, for sending info.
Linda Blaskey read “Learning How to Pray” by Cathy Smith Bowers from When She Named Fire: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry by American Women, ed. by Andrea Hollander Budy (Autumn House Press, 2008). Linda read her own poem “The Rape of an Un-named Artist.”
Ellen Wise read “Amaranth and Moly” by Amy Clampitt from The Kingfisher (Knopf, 1983) and own her poem “Torque Flight (On Looking at a Photo of my Own Unfinished Face).”
Jamie J. Brunson read her poem entitled “Menopause” and “Underground Woman.”
Susan Peiffer read “Mother” from her forthcoming chapbook My Starfish Fingers Fumble: Poems on Getting Gruntled, as well as work from Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s novel-poem “Aurora Leigh” (1856).
Maria Keane read “Briefly it enters, and briefly speaks…” by Jane Kenyon from The Boat of Quiet Hours (Graywolf Press, 1986).
Mary Page Evans read “Clouds” by Wislawa Szymborska, translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh.
Maggie Rowe read her poem “Night Birds Dip” from Every Mother Moves To A New Country, (Finishing Line Press, 2011) and read from the beginning of “In Blackwater Woods,” by Mary Oliver from American Primitive and also Oliver’s “Mornings At Blackwater” from Red Bird (2008).
N. Taylor Collins read “Love at First Sight” by Wislawa Szymborska.
Amanda Newell read her poem “On Amputation” and also “A Short Study of Catastrophe” by Jehanne Dubrow from Stateside (TriQuarterly, 2010).
Wendy Schermer read her poem “She Lost Touch With Herself” and also “In the Secular Night” by Margaret Atwood from Morning in the Burned House (Houghton Mifflin, 1995).
Lindsey Warren read her poem “Morningstar” as well as “Fleeing” by Nelly Sachs and “Born for the Snow” by Phillis Levin.
Nina Bennett read her poem “Born to Be Wild” from The Broadkill Review (issue 5, 2011) and “How to Get to My House,” by Joan Logghe from her newest collection, The Singing Bowl (Univ. of New Mexico Press, 2011).
Eleanor Morrow read “The Pedestrian Woman” by Robin Morgan from Cries of the Spirit: A Celebration of Women’s Spirituality, ed. by Marilyn Sewell, (Boston: Beacon Press, 1991).
Beth Evans offered her poem “Hair” and “Rainy Night” by Joy Harjo from In Mad Love and War (Wesleyan University Press, 1990).
We had readings from Karen Heyman, Darcy Mozer and a wonderful young poet from Newark High, Kemmie O.
I read “Waiting for Icarus” by Muriel Rukeyser from Breaking Open (Random House, 1973) and my poem “Limón Homage” on a painting by Sema Mellian, Homage to Rembrandt.