2011 Poetry Participants

Listed in alphabetical order

David Berman

Breakfast with the Poets − Saturday 8:30 AM

David Berman, a noted attorney, is a graduate of the University of Florida. He earned graduate degrees at Johns Hopkins University and Boston University, where he studied with Robert Lowell. While attending Harvard Law School he frequently published work in the Harvard Advocate. Berman’s work has also appeared in numerous magazines, including Counter Measures, The Formalist, Harvard Magazine, Piedmont Literary Review, The Epigrammatist, Sparrow, Lambs & Trochees, and Orbis. He has also published three chapbooks: Future Imperfect (State Street Press, 1982), Slippage (Robert L. Barth, 1996), and David Berman: Greatest Hits 1965–2002 (Pudding House, 2002). His awards and honors include several from the World Order of Narrative and Formalist Poets, which sponsors a yearly national competition. A 26 year resident of Belmont, Berman is fortunate enough to have many interests in life including food, wine, history, the Bible, and music.

Bob Brodsky

Closing Ceremony - Saturday 7:00 PM

Bob Brodsky comes to polyphonic reading from the visual arts, where all things can become metaphor. His daily work is devoted to bringing forward the gestures found in amateur movie film to inform and delight future generations. He celebrates his good fortune to live among the talented craftsmen of the Merrimack, the Newburyport Choral Society, and the Powow River Poets. Photo by Aukram Burton.

Patricia Callan

Breakfast with the Poets − Saturday 8:30 AM

Closing Ceremony - Saturday 7:00 PM

Patricia Callan, playwright and poet won the Loren Taylor Contest for Papa’s House, a day in the Samuel Clemens family while their house was under construction. Her chapbook, Out of the Case: Instruments on the Analyst’s Couch, (the psychiatric problems of musical instruments) was published in 2008. In collaboration with composer Yoko Nakatani, she wrote the narration for The Adventures of John Manjiro, a suite of piano pieces, performed frequently throughout the United States, most recently at Brandeis University and the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. A graduate of the College of Music at Boston University, she was a choral director and voice coach before becoming a writer.

Michael Cantor

Breakfast with the Poets − Saturday 8:30 AM

Michael Cantor's poetry has appeared in The Dark Horse, Raintown Review, Margie, The Atlanta Review, The Comstock Review (Pushcart nomination), 14 by 14, SCR, and many other journals, anthologies and e-zines. He has won the New England Poetry Club Erika Mumford (2006) and Gretchen Warren (2008) Awards, and was a finalist or semi-finalist for the Nemerov, Richard Wilbur, Donald Justice, and Morton Marr Prizes. A chapbook, The Performer, was published by Pudding House Press in 2007. A native New Yorker, he has lived and worked in Japan, Latin America and Europe; and presently resides on nearby Plum Island with a wife, a cat, and far too many books, woks and condiments.

Alex Charalambides

Annual Youth Poetry Slam - Saturday 2:30 PM

Alex Charalambides is a 2011 Worcester Arts Council Fellowship Grant Recipient. An American born son of Greek refugees who fled Romania when Communists took over most of the Eastern Bloc during the 1950′s, Alex was raised in Worcester Massachusetts. He is a Boston College graduate who began performing poetry in the fall of 2000. Alex is the first poet to represent slam teams from Worcester, Boston & Providence at the annual National Poetry Slam, ranking as high as 5th in the team competition (2003). Winner of the “Last Chance” Slam at the 2005 Individual World Poetry Slam Championships, he went on to place 17th nationally. He also represented Worcester at the 2008 Tournament. He is the Founder & Director of Speakout! Poetry Collective, a group responsible for mentoring teen poets at the Brave New Voices International Youth Poetry Festival, coaching & chaperoning Worcester Youth Slam Teams since 2004. He’s appeared as a poetry mentor for the PBS kids series “Fetch,” fronted a musical fusion band called Skint, toured North America for 6 months in 2005/2006 in support of his debut album, “I am B.” An original cast member of the Cambridge Poetry Award Winning theater ensemble “Doc Brown’s Poetry Circus,” he has also hosted, facilitated workshops, organized & performed at countless events from libraries to rock clubs throughout New England.

Charles Coe

Poetry in Progress: Charles Coe Reads from his New Work - Saturday 3:00 PM

Charles Coe’s poetry and prose has appeared in numerous newspapers and literary reviews and magazines. "Picnic on the Moon," a volume of his poetry, has been published by Leapfrog Press. His poems have been set to music by composers Julia Carey, Beth Denisch and Robert Moran. Charles also writes feature articles, book reviews and interviews for publications such as Harvard Magazine, Northeastern University Law Review and the Boston Phoenix. After winning a poetry fellowship from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, Charles accepted a staff position with the agency and now serves as grant program officer. Charles is a long-time activist with the National Writers Union, a labor union of freelance writers. He has served on the union's National Executive Board, is co-chair of the Boston Chapter Steering Committee, and co-founded the union's National Diversity Committee. Charles is also board president for the National Writers United Service Organization, which administrates the Bellwether Prize, a twenty-five thousand dollar prize awarded every other year to the author of an unpublished novel that addresses some important social issue. In addition to his work as a writer, Charles has an extensive background as a jazz vocalist and has performed and recorded with numerous musicians in the Boston area and throughout New England, including Stan Strickland, Ken Selcer and Avery Sharpe.

Barbara Crane

Breakfast with the Poets − Saturday 8:30 AM

Barbara Lydecker Crane enjoys writing both light and “serious” poems with attention to traditional forms. She’s published over thirty since ‘07, in print publications such as Light Quarterly, Measure, Christian Science Monitor, Think Journal, America, Raintown Review, Blue Unicorn, and The Lyric; in e-zines including SCR, Snakeskin, and Bumbershoot; and several anthologies. New work is forthcoming in Comstock Review and The Flea. Also an artist, Crane lives with her husband in Somerville, MA.

David Davis

Breakfast with the Poets − Saturday 8:30 AM

David Davis is a Newbury resident and a six-year member of the Powow River Poets. He began writing poetry in Colorado in the 1960s as a member of a group that performed poems on the streets of Denver, earning enough for a spaghetti dinner on a good day. His poems frequently reflect his experience as a surveyor, rock climber, birder, math teacher, philosophy professor, and artificial intelligence researcher. Davis has edited or written four books in the area of evolutionary computation. In one of his presentations in 2008 he described new techniques for assessing and managing risk to the risk management division of a major international bank. The talk was well received, but came a year too late.

Diana Der-Hovanessian

Poetry as Social Obligation: Giving Voice to the Voiceless - Saturday 1:00 PM

Diana Der-Hovanessian has earned awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Poetry Society of America, PEN/Columbia Translation Center, National Writers Union, Armenian Writers Union, Paterson Poetry Center, Prairie Schooner, American Scholar, and the Armenian Ministry of Culture. Her 25th book will be published this spring, Dancing At the Monastery. She has taught American poetry, the poetry of human rights, and poetry workshops here and abroad. For many years she arranged the panel discussions and poetry at the Boston Globe Book Fair. http://www.dianaderhovanessian.com/

Maggie Dietz

Maggie Dietz reads from Perennial Fall - Saturday 11:00 AM

Maggie Dietz’s book of poems Perennial Fall (University of Chicago, 2006) won the 2007 Jane Kenyon Award for Outstanding Book of Poetry. For many years she directed the Favorite Poem Project, Robert Pinsky’s special undertaking during his tenure as U.S. Poet Laureate, and is coeditor of three anthologies related to the project: Americans’ Favorite Poems (W.W. Norton & Co., 1999), Poems to Read (Norton, 2002), and, most recently, An Invitation to Poetry (Norton, 2004), for which Dietz co-authored the classroom guide. Her awards include the Grolier Poetry Prize, the George Bennett Fellowship at Phillips Exeter Academy, as well as fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and the NH State Council on the Arts. Her work has appeared in journals such as Poetry, Ploughshares, Agni, Literary Imagination, Harvard Review and Salmagundi. Dietz is at work on a new book of poems titled Anywhere Elsewhere; she teaches in the Creative Writing Program at Boston University and is assistant poetry editor for the online magazine Slate. She teaches at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and is assistant poetry editor for the online magazine Slate. Dietz lives in New Hampshire with her husband, the poet Todd Hearon, and their three-year-old twins.

Rhina P. Espaillat

Closing Ceremony - Saturday 7:00 PM

Rhina P. Espaillat has published eight full-length books and three chapbooks, comprising poems, essays and short stories in both English and her native Spanish. She has also published translations in both directions, including work by St. John of the Cross, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz and Robert Frost, and has won various national awards, in the U.S.A and the Dominican Republic, for work in both languages, including the Richard Wilbur Award, the Nemerov Prize, The Robert Frost "Tree at My Window" Translation Prize, the May Sarton Award, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from Salem State College.

Don Kimball

Breakfast with the Poets − Saturday 8:30 AM

Closing Ceremony - Saturday 7:00 PM

Don Kimball is the author of two chapbooks, Journal of a Flatlander (Finishing Line Press 2009) and Skipping Stones (Pudding House Publications 2008). His poetry has appeared in The Formalist, The Lyric, The Blue Unicorn, and various other journals and anthologies. In 2007, he was nominated for a Pushcart Prize; in 2009, he was nominated for the Pen New England Literary Award; and he has won two first prizes and a second prize in national contests sponsored by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire. Don currently hosts the monthly poetry reading series at Gibson’s Bookstore in Concord, NH.

Len Krisak

Breakfast with the Poets − Saturday 8:30 AM

Len Krisak has taught at Brandeis, Northeastern University, and Stonehill College. His two chapbooks, Midland and Fugitive Child, came out in 1999 from Somers Rocks Press and Aralia Press, respectively. In 2000, his full-length collection Even as We Speak won the Richard Wilbur Prize and was published by the University of Evansville Press. In 2004, If Anything appeared from WordTech Editions, in 2006, Carcanet published his Odes of Horace, a complete translation, and in 2010 his complete translation of Virgil’s Eclogues was published by the University of Pennsylvania Press. In addition to the Richard Wilbur Prize, he has received the Robert Penn Warren and Robert Frost Prizes, the Pinch Prize, a Los Angeles Poetry Festival Award, and numerous honors from the New England Poetry Club, which awarded Even as We Speak the Motton Book Prize. He is the former winner of the GoldPocket.com National Trivia Competition and is a four-time Champion on Jeopardy!

Anne Mulvey

Closing Ceremony - Saturday 7:00 PM

A resident of Newburyport and Professor Emerita at UMass Lowell (UML), Anne Mulvey is a long-time member of the Powow River Poets.  She has had poems published in Abafazi, The Bridge Review, The Community Psychologist and in community newspapers and grassroots publications.  Anne teaches part-time at UMass Lowell and is currently co-editing two special issues of the Journal of Community Psychology of autobiographical narratives by feminist community psychologists.

Marilyn Nelson

The Poetry of Marilyn Nelson - Saturday 2:00 PM

Closing Ceremony - Saturday 7:00 PM

Poet Marilyn Nelson is the author or translator of twelve books and three chapbooks. Her book The Homeplace won the 1992 Annisfield-Wolf Award and was a finalist for the 1991 National Book Award. The Fields Of Praise: New And Selected Poems won the 1998 Poets' Prize and was a finalist for the 1997 National Book Award, the PEN Winship Award, and the Lenore Marshall Prize. Carver: A Life In Poems won the 2001 Boston Globe/Hornbook Award and the Flora Stieglitz Straus Award, was a finalist for the 2001 National Book Award, a Newbery Honor Book, and a Coretta Scott King Honor Book. Fortune’s Bones was a Coretta Scott King Honor Book and won the Lion and the Unicorn Award for Excellence in North American Poetry. A Wreath For Emmett Till won the 2005 Boston Globe–Horn Book Award and was a 2006 Coretta Scott King Honor Book, a 2006 Michael L. Printz Honor Book, and a 2006 Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award Honor Book. The Cachoiera Tales And Other Poems won the L.E. Phillabaum Award and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award. Nelson's newest book of poetry, Sweethearts of Rhythm, was released in 2009 from Dial, and was illustrated by Jerry Pinkney.  Nelson is a professor emeritus of English at the University of Connecticut; founder and director of Soul Mountain Retreat, a small writers’ colony; and was Poet Laureate of the State of Connecticut from 2001-2006.

Alfred Nicol

Closing Ceremony - Saturday 7:00 PM

Alfred Nicol's second collection of poems, Elegy for Everyone, published in June 2010, was chosen for the Anita Dorn Memorial Prize. His first book of poems, Winter Light, received the 2004 Richard Wilbur Award. Nicol edited The Powow River Anthology. His essay on the life and work of Rhina Espaillat appears in American Writers Supplement XXI. His poems have appeared in Poetry, The New England Review, Dark Horse, First Things, Commonweal, Crisis, The Formalist, Light, The Hopkins Review, Atlanta Review and other literary journals.

Charles W. Pratt

From the Box Marked ‘Some are Missing’ read by Charles Pratt - Saturday 12:00 AM

Charles W. Pratt is the author of From the Box Marked Some Are Missing (New and Selected Poems) published last fall by Hobblebush Books as the first volume of the new Hobblebush Granite State Poetry Series. An English teacher for more than 25 years, most of them at Phillips Exeter Academy, in the early 1980’s Pratt and his wife Joan bought and moved to Apple Annie, an orchard in nearby Brentwood (which they have just turned over to new owners in order to keep it alive as a supplier of apples to the area). The central poems of In the Orchard (Tidal Press, drawings by Arthur Balderacchi) were written during the Pratts’ first year in the orchard with the encouragement of an Individual Artist Grant from the New Hampshire Commission on the Arts; the book was selected as a Notable Book for 1986 by the American Library Association. A chapbook, Still Here (2008) won the Finishing Line Press Prize in Poetry. Fables in Two Languages and Similar Diversions (mostly Pratt’s own poems in French translated into English) with illustrations by Marian Parry, was self-published as Pomme Press in 1994. With his wife Pratt published Take the Apple – Essays – Poems – Recipes from Apple Annie in 1999. The Pratts are also authors of Gabriel Loire: Les Vitraux, a book about the 20th century French stained glass master commissioned in 1996 by the Centre International du Vitrail in Chartres. The Pratts have two children and five grandchildren.

Vivian Shipley

Vivian Shipley reads from All of Your Messages Have Been Erased -
Saturday 4:00 PM

Connecticut State University Distinguished Professor and Editor of Connecticut Review, Vivian Shipley teaches at Southern Connecticut State University where she was named Faculty Scholar in 2000, 2005 and 2008. Her ninth book, All of Your Messages Have Been Erased (Southeastern Louisiana University, 2010) was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Greatest Hits: 1974-2010 (Pudding House Press, Youngstown, Ohio, 2010) is her sixth chapbook. Hardboot: Poems New & Old received the 2006 Paterson Prize for Sustained Literary Achievement and the Connecticut Press Club Prize for Best Creative Writing. She has received the Library of Congress’s Connecticut Lifetime Achievement Award for Service to the Literary Community and the Connecticut Book Award for Poetry. Other poetry awards include the Lucille Medwick Prize from the Poetry Society of America, the Robert Frost Foundation Poetry Prize, the Ann Stanford Poetry Prize from the University of Southern California, the Marble Faun Poetry Prize from the William Faulkner Society, the Daniel Varoujan Prize from the New England Poetry Club and the Hart Crane Prize from Kent State. Raised in Kentucky, a member of the University of Kentucky Hall of Fame for Distinguished Alumni, she has a PhD from Vanderbilt University and lives in North Haven, Connecticut with her husband, Ed Harris.

Andrew Sofer

Andrew Sofer reads from Wave - Saturday 10:00 AM

Andrew Sofer grew up in Cambridge, England, and, after boarding school, studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Boston University, and the University of Michigan. His numerous poetry awards include Southwest Review's Morton Marr Prize; Atlanta Review's International Publication Award; First Prize in the Iambs & Trochees Contest; and New England Poetry Club's Gretchen Warren Award. Wave, his first book of poems, was named a finalist for the Morse Prize, the Donald Justice Award, and the New Criterion Prize. Poet A. E. Stallings writes of Wave that “unshowy mastery of technique contrasts with strong deep undercurrents of emotion.” Andrew has acted and directed widely, and his writings on theatre include the acclaimed book The Stage Life of Props. He teaches in the English department at Boston College.

Toni Treadway

Closing Ceremony - Saturday 7:00 PM

Drawn to the excellent public readings of the Powow River Poets, Toni Treadway studies formal poetry and helps organize the Powow’s Polyphony at the Newburyport Literary Festival. She works with old movie film and sings in the Newburyport Choral Society. Photo Credit: Aukram Burton.

Ann Tucker

Closing Ceremony - Saturday 7:00 PM

Soprano Ann Tucker in recent years has been a soloist in Newburyport and the Merrimac Valley. In July 2010 she joined Melopoeia in concert at the Actor's Studio in Newburyport, singing Spanish and Brazilian folksongs. Most recently, Ann sang selections from “Canciones Espanoles Antiguas“ in a Melopoeia performance of the work of Federico Garcia Lorca. Ann has sung with several choral groups in the Northshore area; the Cantemus Chamber Chorus, the Candlelight Chorale, WomenSong and the Newburyport Choral Society. She is currently studying voice with Neal Ferreira. When not singing she can be found painting in her studio. Ann is also a portrait painter. You can see her work at www.anntuckerportraits.com