Award-winning poet Michael Steffen will read from his recently-published collection, Blood Narrative (Main Street Rag Press, 2021), on Saturday, October 9, 2021 at 4pm at Stone Valley Arts at Fox Hill, 145 E. Main Street, Poultney, VT 05764.
Vermont poets April Ossman and Syd Lea give Steffen's poetry high praise (see below). A brief Open Mic will kick things off, and a book signing will follow the reading. Please respond via email (davidmook@aol.com) to reserve a spot in the Open Mic. The FREE author event will be held in the SVA Main Gallery where an exciting exhibit is also on display (details below).
Praise for Michael Steffen's Poetry:
These warm, generous, and lively poems speak to the narrative of body and spirit, of family, marriage, community and culture, as they come to terms with past and present losses. They do it best by living in the present, grateful for the whole of every moment—luscious, embarrassing, lonely, or loving, reveling in the sensual. Steffen's capacity to surprise with sudden humor or beauty or truth infuses every poem, reminding us to live fully, because "somewhere offshore in the eye of apocalypse,/angels raise their trumpets—" as I raise mine, to this wonderful blood narrative.
- April Ossmann (author of Event Boundaries)
Steffen scrupulously avoids flamboyance, the sort of surface dazzle we find in poems that, like the stereotypical Chinese meal, are immediately appealing but leave us hungry instants later. His plain style approach allows his insights, as it were, to sneak up on us...until we discover ourselves (how did it happen?) in a world so full of pathos that we catch our breaths.
- Sydney Lea
About the Author:
Michael Steffen is the author of three previous poetry collections. No Good at Sea (Legible Press, 2002) won the Legible Press Poetry Prize. Heart Murmur (Bordighera Press, 2009) won the Bordighera Poetry Prize, appearing as a bilingual edition in both Italian and English. His third collection, Bad Behavior (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2012), won the Brick Road Poetry Prize. While a resident of Pennsylvania, Michael was granted a 2002 Fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. His poems have appeared in a wide variety of journals, including Poetry, Potomac Review, Chiron Review, Poet Lore and the American Journal of Poetry, to name a few. Michael has read widely in a variety of venues, including bars, coffee houses, art galleries, libraries, bookstores, colleges and universities throughout northeastern Pennsylvania, the greater Philadelphia area, the Lehigh Valley, New York City, New Jersey, Buffalo, Rochester, Massachusetts, Ohio and Canada. He has also lectured at the University of Scranton and been a mentor in the PEN Prison Writing Program. Michael is a graduate of the MFA in Creative Writing Program at Vermont College and currently lives in Buffalo, New York.
ART SHOW!
Priority Prints is an exhibition of 140 monotypes created by 80 artist members of the Monotype Guild of New England.
This is an evocative collection of art work that invites us to slow down and look closely [much the same as poetry]. The artists in this exhibition explored a wide range of printmaking methods beyond the direct roll of ink on a hard surface that include etching, woodcut, linocut, lithography, screen printing, cyanotype, collograph, solar plate, gel plate and many more. To create a monotype is to work with deliberateness and intention while embracing serendipity and surprise [much the same as poetry].
This exhibition of monotypes reveals a community of diverse artists dedicated to the art of the 'unique print'. This is generous work. I hope you will come see this exhibit and discover the many ways that a monotype 'strikes to the heart of the matter' [as does poetry]. But first, slow down and look [listen] more closely…a conversation awaits.
Poetry, Art, Conversation...don't miss it!
Email: davidmook@aol.com
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