We have another busy week of poetry this week in upstate New York and one the big events that will be happening down in Treadwell at the Bright Hill Center for the Word Thursdays series hosted by Bertha Rogers. The two featured poets that Bertha lined up for this month, Helen Ruggieri and Judith Kerman are both well published, much respected poets in the area.
At 7 pm on May 24, Word Thursdays will presents Olean poet Helen Ruggieri and Woodstock poet Judith Kerman; they will read from their work after the open mic, which begins at 7 pm, and during which all those attending are invited to read their own work or that of others for up to five minutes. The readings take place in the Word & Image Gallery (now featuring the mixed media works of Samir Sobhy) at Bright Hill Literary Center, 94 Church Street, Treadwell, one block north of Barlow’s General Store (Rtes 14 & 16).
HELEN RUGGIERI has been writing and publishing her work for thirty years. She has a book of short prose pieces (haibun) from Foothills Publishing called The Character for Woman, about living in Japan and a new book of poetry from Kitsune Books called Butterflies Under a Japanese Moon which has been nominated for a Pulitzer. Other books are Glimmer Girls from Mayapple Press about growing up female in the 50s; Concrete Madonna about the pink collar experience; and Rock City Hill Exercises about hiking in the Alleghenies. Japanese verse forms (haibun, haiku, senryu) have appeared in many American and international publications in Turkey, Belgium, England, Ireland, Russia, Slovakia and in Japan where her haiku have been published in Japanese/English newspapers and have won awards for haiku in English. She will be reading from her new book and other work.
JUDITH KERMAN is a poet, translator and publisher. She has published eight books or chapbooks of poetry, most recently Galvanic Response (March Street Press, 2005) and the bilingual collection, Plane Surfaces/Plano de Incidencia (Santo Domingo: CCLEH, 2002), with Spanish translations by Johnny Durán. Her two books of translations of Spanish-language poetry are Praises & Offenses: Three Women Poets from the Dominican Republic (BOA Editions, 2009) and A Woman in Her Garden: Selected Poems of Dulce María Loynaz (White Pine Press, 2002). Kerman was a Fulbright Senior Scholar to the Dominican Republic in 2002, translating the poetry and fiction of Dominican women writers. She runs Mayapple Press (1980-present) and was founding editor of Earth’s Daughters (1971 to present). She is the founder/coordinator of the Rustbelt Roethke Professional Writers’ Retreat (now Woodstock Mayapple Writers’ Retreat, 2003-present) and has led community writing groups since 1991. She was Dean of Arts and Behavioral Sciences (1991-1997) and Professor of English (1997-2011) at Saginaw Valley State University. Now Professor Emerita of English, she relocated from Michigan to Woodstock, NY, in summer 2011.
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