A May Celebration Of Poetry And Music

Jane Wickham once again invites poets and poetry fans in and out of the PoemAlley circle to Mapleview Towers for a free-form afternoon of readings and music, this time honoring the spring season.

Jane Wickham

May Celebration is part of PA/Curley’s Poets’ ongoing outreach to the senior community of Stamford, following on 2013’s winter gathering (serendipitously accented by a weekend snow storm), followed the next year by a fall Halloween reading (with costumed appearances). Jane’s programs are highlighted by a spontaneous mixture of readings, singing and piano accompaniment.

Jane has been regularly involved with PoemAlley for several years and is a resident of Mapleview, located across from the Macy’s end of the Stamford Town Center.

Bring your favorite poem to read, or just come and listen and join us for lots of fun and refreshments!

Presented by PoemAlley and Curley’s Diner, this public event is free; only on-street parking is permitted, unless you have a Mapleview Towers Parking Permit.

 

Where:
Community Room
Mapleview Towers
51 Grove Street (Corner of Broad and Grove)

When:

Sunday, May 22, 2016
3-6 pm

Contact:
203-274-5474, Jane Wickham

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.

Poetic Notes & Creative Insights With Christie Fountain

Vijay Seshadri

Christie Fountain is a Stamford resident and unpublished writer whose muse is the United States Postal Service. 

 
Initially involved with the Tuesday night sessions at Curley’s in 2010, tomorrow night Christie will present notes and observations taken from a workshop on creative nonfiction she took with Vijay Seshadri, a few months after he received the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

Hope Street, Glenbrook, CT

Holding a master’s degree in linguistics, Christie served on the staff of Wigwag, a short-lived general interest magazine in 1989-1990, one of a variegated range of pursuits over the years: “I’ve done a lot of things but not one thing for very long. I recently found my Pan Am stewardess uniform in a trunk in the basement. What’s that thing pinned to the blouse? Oh yes, the cockpit key.” Currently, she is founder and president of Stamford's Glenbrook Neighborhood Association.