Poets George Nicholson and Will Nixon will be the featured readers when the Woodstock Poetry Society & Festival meets at the Woodstock Town Hall, 76 Tinker Street, on Saturday, September 8th, 2007 at 2:00pm.
The readings will be hosted by Woodstock area poet Phillip Levine. All meetings are free and open to the public. For information about the group, and its activities, visit http://www.woodstockpoetry.com.
George J. Nicholson is a local Woodstock poet and visual artist working in various media. He has been writing poetry since 1975, when a series of eight poems spontaneously flowed upon his first exposure to Igor Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. George is an active performer within the Hudson Valley poetry scene.
George’s poetry is steeped in the nuances of feeling and his passionate search for meaning. Symbol, archetype, and the dynamics of transformation as reflected in nature, human relationship, and the questing human soul comprise the core themes of his work. His deep personal affinity to ancient Greece is also interwoven throughout much of what he has written.
George is a firm believer in a greater intelligence “behind the scenes” and considers himself to be at his most creative when he is acting as a “stenographer to the unconscious.”
Among his most salient influences are the mystic, poet saints of India: Tukaram Maharaj, Alama Prabhu, Mirabai, and others. He has also drawn inspiration from Basho, Dante, Eliot, and the poets of ancient Greece, many of them anonymous.
George has self-published the chapbook First Light. He is currently completing work on Ancient Heart: Dialogues with Stone, inspired by the ancient marble sculptures housed in the Athen’s museum, and Voice Within the Silences, a cross section of his work that spans 30 years. George’s poetry has appeared regularly in Journeys, a Jungian inspired periodical and is included in the anthology, Vines of Victory (2001).
Will Nixon has published two chapbooks, When I Had It Made (Pudding House) and The Fish Are Laughing (Pavement Saw) plus poems in many journals and magazines. He has finished a cyberpunk epic, Lyndon Baines Takes a Fare to the Palace of Wisdom, about a Gotham cabbie in 2063. Now he’s working on a poetry manuscript inspired by the movie Night of the Living Dead and on another about living in Hoboken in the 80s, Love in the City of Grudges. He lives in Woodstock.
