Many people have heard of the famous Spanish poet Federico García Lorca but few are aware of his connection to Hardwick, VT. Biographer Patricia Billingsley will be giving a talk at the Hardwick Town House on Sunday, April 8 at 2 PM. The program is sponsored by the Jeudevine Memorial Library, the Hardwick Historical Society and the Hardwick Town House. The Historical Society will have a display of their materials on Lorca and Cummings.
The celebrated Spanish poet and playwright Federico García Lorca was only 38 years old when he was executed by nationalist partisans in August 1936, at the very beginning of the Spanish Civil War. Few people are aware that in August 1929, the poet spent ten days in Eden Mills, Vermont, with a young Hardwick native named Philip Cummings. They met when Cummings was enrolled in a summer language program in July 1928. The following June Lorca came to New York and Cummings invited him to visit him in Vermont and Lorca came up to the Cummings family cottage on Lake Eden.
The two young men spent their days roaming the fields and forests around the lake, talking non-stop about poetry and life. In quieter moments, Lorca began writing a series of haunting and evocative poems that combined his intense private emotions with images drawn from the Vermont landscape.
When Patricia Billingsley first read Ian Gibson's landmark biography of Federico García Lorca in 2006, she was surprised to learn that Lorca had once counted a young Vermonter named Philip Cummings among his close friends. Ms. Billingsley will discuss recent findings that shed new light on Lorca's relationship with Cummings and the influence of the Vermont episode on his poetry. She will use vintage maps and photographs to illustrate the specific view of Vermont that Cummings chose to share with his friend. Finally, she will explain how the decision by early Lorca scholars to dismiss the poet's time in Vermont as inconsequential left this important episode in his life unexplored for decades.
Ms. Billingsley has given invited lectures on Lorca's Vermont interlude and the poems it inspired at the International Institute in Madrid, City University of New York (CUNY), Smith College, Dartmouth College, and several public libraries. In 2013, she co-curated a "Lorca in Vermont" exhibit at the CUNY Graduate Center, part of a citywide "Lorca in New York" festival. A graduate of the University of Delaware and California State University at Northridge, Ms. Billingsley worked as a software usability analyst before becoming a communications specialist at Smith College. Now an independent biographer, she is writing a book about Lorca's multi-year relationship with Cummings and its impact on the poet's life and work.
For more information about the program call the Jeudevine Library at 472-5948.
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