2014 Poetry Participants

David Berman

Coffee 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.

Michael Burkard

The Poetry of Michael Burkard and Richard Hoffman — Saturday 10:00 AM

Michael Burkard, an award-winning poet who is also a songwriter and visual artist, has published work in numerous journals and magazines. His books include Fictions of the Self; My Secret Boat; Entire Dilemma; Unsleeping; Pennsylvania Collection Agency; Envelope of Night, New and Selected Poems; Lucky Coat Anywhere, and several collections that combine his paintings and photographs with his poetry. He has taught at Bennington College, Sarah Lawrence and New York University, and in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Syracuse University since 1997. In addition to the Whiting Writers’ Award, Burkard has received fellowships and grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the NEA, the NYS Foundation for the Arts, the Fine Arts Work Center at Provincetown and the Poetry Society of America.

Michael Cantor

Coffee with the Poets — Saturday 8:30 AM

Michael Cantor is the author of a full length poetry collection, Life in the Second Circle (Able Muse Press, 2012), which was a finalist for the Massachusetts Book Award in Poetry, and a 1977 chapbook, The Performer. His poems have appeared in The Dark Horse, Raintown Review, Measure, Alabama Literary Review, American Arts Quarterly, Kim, and many other journals and anthologies. Additional honors include the New England Poetry Club Gretchen Warren and Erika Mumford Awards and First Prize in the NAA Poetry Competition. He resides on nearby Plum Island, and is a long time Powow River Poets member.

Alex Charalambides

Annual Youth Poetry Slam — Saturday 2:30 PM

Alex Charalambides is the Managing Director for the Mass L.E.A.P. (Literary Education & Performance) Collective, a group responsible for the annual Louder than a Bomb Massachusetts Youth Poetry Slam Festival. 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). He is the Founder & former 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.” Alex received the 2011 Worcester Arts Council Fellowship, was named a 2011 "Hometown Hero," by Worcester Magazine, and was named "12 to watch in 2012" by Pulse Magazine.alex@massleapcollective.org

Robert W. Crawford

Coffee with the Poets — Saturday 8:30 AM

Robert W. Crawford lives in Chester, New Hampshire, on the shore of Whetstone Pond. His second book of poetry, The Empty Chair, won the 2011 Richard Wilbur Award. His first book, Too Much Explanation Can Ruin a Man, was published in 2005. His poems have appeared in many national journals including The Formalist, First Things, Dark Horse, The Raintown Review, The Lyric, Measure, Light and Forbes. He is a two-time winner of the Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award, a trustee of the Robert Frost farm in Derry, New Hampshire, the co-founder of the Hyla Brook Poets, and a long-time member of Newburyport’s own Powow River Poets.

David Davis

Coffee with the Poets — Saturday 8:30 AM

David Davis has been a member of the Powow River Poets since 2005. He is an artificial intelligence researcher and high-tech entrepreneur with a long-term interest in writing. A story of his in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, anthologized and translated into multiple languages, was listed as one of the top 20 science fiction short stories of its year. Davis has edited or written five books in his area of technical expertise, has published one book of poetry, and is currently working on Poetry in The Field, an anthology of poems begun with notes taken on site.

Dick Davis

The Poetry of Dick Davis and Peter Filkins — Saturday 1:00 PM

Dick Davis is emeritus professor of Persian at Ohio State University. He has published numerous translations of medieval Persian poetry (the most recent being Faces of Love: Hafez and the Poets of Shiraz, Penguin, 2012) as well as eight volumes of his own poetry.

Rhina P. Espaillat

A Bilingual Reading by Rhina P. Espaillat — Saturday 3:00 PM

Rhina P. Espaillat has published nine 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.

David Ferry

The Poetry of David Ferry and Marge Piercy — Saturday 2:00 PM

David Ferry is Hart Professor of English, Emeritus, at Wellesley College; since his retirement from Wellesley he has frequently been a Visiting Lecturer in the Boston University Graduate Creative Writing Program; he is currently a "Distinguished Visiting Scholar'' at Suffolk University. His most recent books of poetry are Bewilderment: New Poems and Translations, Chicago University Press, 2012 and On This Side of the River: Selected Poems, Waywiser Press, U.K., 2012. He is currently translating the Aeneid of Virgil. His prizes and awards include The National Book Award, 2012, for his book Bewilderment: New Poems and Translations; The Ruth B Lilly Prize, from the Poetry Foundation, "for lifetime achievement," 2011; The Golden Rose , "for lifetime achievement," New England Poetry Club, 2007; D.Litt. (Hon.), Amherst College, 2006; Harold Morton Landon Translation Prize, Academy of American Poets; Academy Award for Literature, American Academy of Arts and Letters, 2001; The 2000 Lenore Marshall Prize, Academy of American Poets; the 2000 Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize, The Library of Congress; Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1998. His wife, who died in 2006, was Anne Ferry, the distinguished literary scholar and critic; his children, Elizabeth Emma Ferry, anthropologist, and Stephen Ferry, photojournalist.

Peter Filkins

The Poetry of Dick Davis and Peter Filkins — Saturday 1:00 PM

Peter Filkins has published three full-length collections of poetry, The View We're Granted (Johns Hopkins 2012), After Homer (Braziller 2002), and What She Knew (Orchises 1998), as well as a chapbook, Augustine's Vision, which won the 2010 New American Press Chapbook Award. The View We're Granted was co-winner of the Sheila Margaret Motton Best Book Award from the New England Poetry Club. He teaches literature and writing at Bard College at Simon's Rock in Great Barrington, MA.

Richard Hoffman

The Poetry of Michael Burkard and Richard Hoffman — Saturday 10:00 AM

Richard Hoffman is author of the Half the House: a Memoir, and the poetry collections, Without Paradise, Gold Star Road, winner of the 2006 Barrow Street Press Poetry Prize and the 2008 Sheila Motton Award from the New England Poetry Club, and Emblem. A fiction writer as well, his Interference & Other Stories was published in 2009. His new memoir, Love & Fury, is forthcoming from Beacon Press. He is Senior Writer in Residence at Emerson College.
Photo Credit: Richard Howard

A.M. Juster

The Poetry of A.M. Juster and Len Krisak — Saturday 11:00 AM

A.M. Juster’s work has appeared in The Paris Review, The New Criterion, North American Review, Southwest Review and other publications. His first book of original poetry, The Secret Language of Women (University of Evansville Press, 2003) won the 2002 Richard Wilbur Award and he is a three-time winner of the Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award of The Formalist. His other books are Longing for Laura (Birch Brook Press, 2001) (selections from Petrarch’s Canzoniere), Horace’s Satires (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008) and Tibullus’ Elegies (Oxford University Press, 2012). The University of Toronto Press will be publishing his translation of Saint Aldhelm’s Aenigmata and the University of Pennsylvania Press will be publishing his translation of Maximianus’ Elegies. He is a graduate of Yale and Harvard with two honorary doctorates and he has been a fellow at the Sewanee Writers Conference. He has taught formal poetry at Emerson College and biotechnology law and policy at Boston University.

Joan Alice Wood Kimball

Coffee with the Poets — Saturday 8:30 AM

Joan Alice Wood Kimball is a founder of the Concord Poetry Center and a member of Powow River Poets and the poetry performance troupe, Light Brigade. She is the author of two books of poetry, This River Hill (2009) and Summer River (2013). Her poems were finalists for the 2010 Morton Marr and the 2011 and 2012 Atlanta Review prizes, and she has appeared in a number of journals including Measure, Raintown Review, Atlanta Review, Comstock Review and Avocet.

Len Krisak

The Poetry of A.M. Juster and Len Krisak — Saturday 11:00 AM

Len Krisak has taught at Brandeis University, 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 2014, his complete translation of Ovid’s Amores and Ars Amatoria will appear from the University of Pennsylvania Press, his Afterimage from Measure Press / University of Evansville, his complete Catullus from Carcanet Press, and in 2015, his complete translation of Rilke’s Neue Gedichte (New Poems) will be published by Boydell & Brewer. 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!

Michele Leavitt

Coffee with the Poets — Saturday 8:30 AM

Michele Leavitt's book-length poetry collection, Back East, won the inaugural Michael Macklin First Book Prize and was published by Moon Pie Press in 2013. Her memoir excerpt, “No Trespassing,” won The Ohio State University’s 2010 William Allen Award for creative nonfiction, was published in The Journal, and received a notable listing in 2011 Best American Essays. Other works of poetry and prose appear in So to Speak, Dogwood, Umbrella, Mezzo Cammin, The Tower Journal, Passager, and Per Contra. A high school dropout, hepatitis C survivor, and former trial attorney, she now lives in Maine, where she co-directs the Honors Program at Unity College and teaches writing.

Alfred Nicol

Coffee with the Poets — Saturday 8:30 AM

Alfred Nicol’s book of poetry, Elegy for Everyone, published in 2009, was chosen for the first Anita Dorn Memorial Prize. He received the 2004 Richard Wilbur Award for an earlier volume, Winter Light, of which Jay Parini, biographer of Robert Frost, said, "This is certainly among the finest new volumes of poetry I have read in years." Nicol has collaborated with poet Rhina Espaillat and classical guitarist John Tavano in making the CD Melopoeia. His most recent publication is Second Hand Second Min, a collaboration with his sister, the artist Elise Nicol.

Marge Piercy

The Poetry of David Ferry and Marge Piercy — Saturday 2:00 PM

Knopf recently published the paperback edition of Marge Piercy’s 18th book of poetry,The Hunger Moon: New & Selected Poems. Other titles available in paperback include The Crooked Inheritance, The Moon is Always Female, and What are Big Girls Made Of. Piercy has written 17 novels. Her most recent is Sex Wars. PM Press just reissued Dance the Eagle to Sleep, Vida, and Braided Lives, with new introductions by the author. Her memoir is Sleeping with Cats (Harper Perennial). Piercy’s work has been translated into 19 languages. She’s given readings, speeches, and workshops in over 450 venues in the United States and abroad. In 2014, PM will publish Piercy’s first collection of short stories, The Cost of Lunch, Etc. Each June she gives a juried intensive poetry workshop in Wellfleet.