<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=windows-1252"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;">Dear All,<div><br></div><div>I just wanted to send an email aboit two upcoming events run by members of the WGCP.</div><div><br></div><div>First is a reading this Saturday by our very own Jim Berger, in the series run by our own Katie Yates. Below that, I'll post information about a one-day workshop on poetry and photography that our own Gian Lombardo helped organize at the Merrill House.</div><div><br></div><div>Onward,</div><div>Richard Deming, Coordinator</div><div><br></div><div>+++</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>Poetry Reading<br>March 29, 2014 7:30pm<br>The Infinite Well - 123 Court Street New Haven, CT<br><br>James Berger & Joel Lewis<br><br><br>James Berger lives in New Haven CT. He is a Senior Lecturer at Yale–where he does not lecture. He teaches seminars on how language, in the proper solution, dissolves, or else reincorporates into unrecognizable, engulfing signals disguised as pieces of the world. He is author of Prior, a book of poems (BlazeVox, 2013), After the End: Representations of Post-Apocalypse (University of Minnesota Press, 1999) and the forthcoming The Disarticulate: Language, Impairment, and the Narratives of Modernity (New York University Press); and is editor of Helen Keller’s The Story of My Life: The Restored Edition (Random House, 2003).<br><br> Prior to Air<br><br>The sea is slushy and the sky doesn’t finish its sentences.<br>The sky is all awareness and the sea is punctual.<br>Autumn is cleaner if you like decay.<br>The earth is vulnerable in all seasons.<br>By satellite you can see the massive storms lined up over both oceans.<br>We closed the basement door and could hear what sounded like cars<br>Or sheds being sucked up into the updraft;<br>Expulsion seeming without pressure.<br>It made me think of what it would sound like if an arrow shot through a larynx.<br><br>From Prior, BlazeVox, 2013.<br><br>Joel Lewis is the author of House Rent Boogie (Yellow Press) , Vertical’s Currency (Talisman House), Learning From New Jersey (Talisman House), Surrender When Leaving Coach (Hanging Loose) and the recent North River Rundown (Accent Editions). He has edited an anthology of contemporary New Jersey poetry, a collection of Ted Berrigan's talks and the selected poems of the modernist-communist poet Walter Lowenfels. He and his wife, film theorist Sandy Flitterman-Lewis, live in Hoboken -<br><br>Heavy Jesus has no mortgage on me.<br>I lack the ceremonial garments.<br>I mix the clarified butter with Crisco.<br>I’m not a gabbai<br>And possess no high collar or antic wide brim.<br><br>The half-ruined cities of New Jersey<br>are at the core of my regional gestures<br><br>against insufficient nightmares<br>& the soft tyranny of bus schedules.<br><br>From Learning From New Jersey (Talisman House, 2007)</div><div><div><br><div>Begin forwarded message:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;"><font color="#000000"><b> </b></font></div><div><div lang="EN-US" link="blue" vlink="purple" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;"><div class="WordSection1" style="page: WordSection1;"><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">+++<o:p></o:p></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><strong><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">POETRY WORKSHOP with Kelle Groom</span></strong><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Segoe UI', sans-serif;"><br></span><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"UNLOCKING MEMORY, OBSESSION, AND IMAGE"<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Saturday, April 26, from 1:00 to 4:00 pm<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">At the James Merrill House, 107 Water Street, 3<sup>rd</sup><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>floor, Stonington, CT<br> <br>Nathalie Sarraute said, “Poetry is what makes the invisible appear.” But what fuels poems? What tools can we use to access the subconscious and discover our obsessions? This workshop is generative. We’ll use photographs to unlock memory and to look for points of connection between the seemingly divergent, exploring the power of metaphor. Select and bring ten photographs to workshop. (Electronic photos on your computer or tablet are fine.) Each of these images must be important to you for some reason. You should appear in half of these photos. The remaining photos can be of anything you like: landscapes, loved ones, friends, art, etc. They can be photos of strangers found tucked in thrift store books or old family photos of unknown relatives or images of places you’ve never been. But, for you, all of the photos must evoke strong feeling.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This workshop is free, but limited to 10 participants. Registration is required. Seating is on a first-come, first-served basis. Sign up at:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.jamesmerrillhouse.org/groom_form.html" style="color: purple; text-decoration: underline;">http://www.jamesmerrillhouse.org/groom_form.html</a><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span></p><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">----------</span><o:p></o:p></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Kelle Groom's memoir,<em><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I Wore the Ocean in the Shape of a Girl</span></em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>(Simon & Schuster 2011; paperback 2012), is a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick, New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice selection, a Library Journal Best Memoir, Barnes & Noble Best Book of the Month,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://oprah.com/" style="color: purple; text-decoration: underline;">Oprah.com</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>O Magazine selection, and Oxford American Editor's Pick. Her poetry collections are<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Five Kingdoms</span></em>, winner of a 2010 Florida Book Award and recognized in Entertainment Weekly's "Best New Poetry" (Anhinga Press),<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Luckily,</span></em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>winner of a 2006 Florida Book Award (Anhinga), and<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Underwater City,</span></em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>selected for the University Press of Florida Contemporary Poetry Series, 2004. Her work has appeared in<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Best American Poetry 2010, The New Yorker, New York Times, Ploughshares, Poetry</span></em>, and The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor, among others, and has been recognized in the Pushcart Prize and Best American Non-Required Reading anthologies. She is the recipient of fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Black Mountain Institute, University of Nevada-Las Vegas, Library of Congress, Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Millay Colony for the Arts, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, American Antiquarian Society, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and Ucross Foundation, as well as a State of Florida Division of Cultural Affairs grant, and Barbara Deming Memorial Fund grant. Groom was Distinguished Writer-in-Residence (2012-2013) at Sierra Nevada College, Lake Tahoe, where she is now on the faculty of the low-residency MFA Program. Former poetry editor of<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The Florida Review,</span></em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>she is now a contributing editor. Groom is a 2014 NEA Literature Fellow in Prose, and the James Merrill House Writer-in-Residence for Spring 2014. </span><o:p></o:p></p><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><o:p> </o:p></div></div></div></div></blockquote></div></div></body></html>