An Evening With Poet Faith Vicinanza: 2,500 Miles, 13 Grandchildren, Four Collections—And No Cabs

Tomorrow night’s featured reader at Curley’s will be Faith Vicinanza, Newtown-based poet, nature photographer, avid gardener, arts educator, adventurer, and grandmother of 13.

Published far and wide, Faith has produced four collections of poetry to date, including Jupiter Colliding With the Sun (Hanover Press, 1995) and the following year’s In the Thick of It from the same house, which cautions the uninitiated how it is “… best for all of us that Faith is an incredibly gifted poet, not a taxi cab driver,” as she takes a no-holds-barred approach to her writing, lifting readers out of their collective comfort zone into a difficult, often confusing personal and creative journey, ultimately, proffering a welcome “… outstretched hand to return (them) safely home.”

Now busy working on two more collections, as well as a memoir, Faith has also extended her instructive skills into print via 2002’s My Not-Quite Blank Book (also from Hanover), a unique workbook co-written with screenwriter Joan Gleckler, featuring challenging exercises with a fanciful bent to stir the literary creative juices.

Faith’s own expressive flair can be enjoyed in this on-stage reading of “What One Ash of Your Bone” at the 2008 Confluencia poetry series, at Naugatuck Valley Community College, the Playbox Theater, in Waterbury:

This and other clips of her performances (and those of favorite artists) can be found on her personal video channel.

Faith is a member of the US Slam Team that competed in Stockholm in 1997; in the same year, she also served as Executive Director of the National Slam Championships and the Connecticut Poetry Festival, which, in drawing over 300 national and international poets to Middletown for five days, remains the largest poetry event in state history. Among her other accomplishments, she has been a poet laureate nominee, and earned the 2003 Connecticut Commission on the Arts Advocate for the Arts Award. 

You can read about her 100-day blog published from the road while cycling with Peter, her husband (and fellow IT specialist), 2,500 miles over 98 days from Key West, Florida to St. Stephen, Canada in the summer of 2005 at http://faithandpeter.blogs.com.