Poetry Makes a Splash at Chapters Bookstore
PITTSFIELD, Mass. - As part of the Berkshire Festival of Women in the Arts, Berkshire writer Rosemary Starace will host Letters to the World – Women, Poetry, and Community. This reading features the international anthology of women’s poetry, Letters to the World: Poems from the Wom-po Listserv (Red Hen Press, 2008), which Starace co-edited with Moira Richards and Lesley Wheeler.Starace will introduce the book, a unique global Internet collaboration presenting the work of over 250 poets from around the world. Six local and regional contributors, Lisken Van Pelt Dus, Lori Desrosiers, Ellen Goldstein, Joyce Heon, Diane Kendig, and Evie Shockley, will read their poems and others from the anthology. The event will be held at Chapters Bookstore, 78 North Street, in Pittsfield, MA, on Saturday, March 21 at 2:30 pm.
The range of experience covered in the book is vast. Iranian poet Farideh Hassanzadeh-Mostafavi speaks of war’s cost: “I leave the frightened moon in the sky” and “I feel night by night more real / and old,” while Evie Shockley asks that poetry “be / a wail of a sound, surfacing / to fountain dark water.” Hindi poet Rati Saxena illuminates the experience of Alzheimers: “I am pulling her / she is becoming a little girl / again and again.” Ellen Goldstein describes a kiss: “the shocking taste of your mouth on mine like / sharpened light.” Romanian-born Ana Doina writes of poetry in a totalitarian state: “our resistance, our vindication,” while Joyce Heon revels in pure sound: “hilarious, glorious, rock us / gregarious us, us, us!”.
What others have said about Letters to the World:
“The collective voice of these bold, humorous, and striking poems captures a vast spectrum of feminine experience and proves ‘herstory’ a force to be reckoned with. The reader is swept up by a perfect storm of tenderness, wit, narrative and lyrical vision, culled from the seasoned and emergent, those close to home and she who speaks to us continents away. Oh, Mighty Wom-po, long may you serve!” —Dorianne Laux, author of Awake, What We Carry, Smoke, and Facts About the Moon.
“Panoramic in scope, these Letters to the World and from the world of the on-line Wom-Po Listserv exult in a constellation of voices both individual and now connected. I can’t help but think of Emily Dickinson, whose line provides the title for this anthology, privately binding her poems with needle and thread and storing them away. It’s a gift that we have these poems available from a community that is passionate about poetry and women’s voices. It’s a conversation in which we should all be engaged. It’s a new cosmos. Imagine if Dickinson had been able to log on.” —Gary Short, author of Theory of Twilight, Flying Over Sonny Liston, and 10 Moons and 13 Horses.
Letters to the World fulfills a common desire of writers to connect across boundaries that ordinarily separate. The reading and discussion will be followed by a book signing, a reception, and a chance to browse the shelves of Chapters Bookstore. For more information, please contact Rosemary Starace, star@rosemarystarace.com, 413-443-6992. For directions to Chapters, call 413-443-2665.
