Sunken Garden Poetry & Music Festival

Summer Performance Series 2010

Please see FESTIVAL FACTS below for information about food, parking and seating.

The Festival will be held on Hill-Stead's grounds RAIN, STORM or SHINE.

Advertise in the 2010 Poetry Program! Download our advertising Rates and specs PDF or email poetry@hillstead.org for information / reservations. For Early Bird discount (–25%), reserve and pay by March 15, 2010. Standard reservation deadline April 15, 2010. Non-profits receive 15% discount (not to be combined with early bird discount). All camera-ready ads due no later than April 30, 2010. See 2009 Poetry program cover.

2010 Poetry Festival dates are as follows:
(Every other Wednesday night June—August)

• June 9, Opening Night
• June 23
• July 7
• July 21
• August 4, Closing Night

OPENING NIGHT
June 9, Wednesday, 6:30 pm
Galway Kinnell
"One of the true master poets of his generation... There are few others writing today in whose work we feel so strongly the full human presence." —Morris Dickstein, New York Times Book Review

Over a career spanning five decades and 12 collections of poetry thus far, Galway Kinnell has received the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the MacArthur Genius Fellowship and the Frost Medal for Lifetime Achievement by the Poetry Society of America. In their citation for the 2003 National Book Award, the judges called Kinnell "America's preeminent visionary" whose work "..sets him at the table with his mentors: Rilke, Whitman, Frost." Kinnell lives in Vermont and New York City, and currently serves at the Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets. [Photo of Galway Kinnell by Karen M. Peluso.]

Music to be announced.

June 23, Wednesday, 6:30 pm
Marie Ponsot; Gabrielle Calvocoressi

Native New Yorker Marie Ponsot was born in 1921. She has published numerous works, including Springing (2002); The Bird Catcher (1998 — winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and finalist for the 1999 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize); The Green Dark (1988); Admit Impediment (1981); and True Minds (1957). In addition to the National Book Critics Circle Award, Ms. Ponsot is the recipient of the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Prize, the Shaughnessy Medal of the Modern Language Association, and a creative writing grant from the NEA. She teaches in the graduate writing program at Columbia University, New York City.

Gabrielle Calvocoressi's first collection of poems, The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart (2005), won the Connecticut Book Award and was shortlisted for the Northern California Book Award. Recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, Ms. Calvocoressi has been or is soon-to-be published in many journals and online publications including The Paris Review, The New England Review, Gulf Coast, Guernica and The Owls. Born in Central Connecticut, Ms. Calvocoressi lives in Los Angeles and teaches in the MFA program at California College of Arts in San Francisco and in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Warren Wilson College. In the fall of 2009, she began a visiting professorship at Bennington College.

Music to be announced.

July 7, Wednesday, 6:30 pm
Jean Valentine;
Sunken Garden Poetry Prize First and Second Place winners Ginny Lowe Connors and Kate Lebo

The current state poet of New York (2008–2010), Jean Valentine won the Yale Younger Poets Award for her first book, Dream Barker, in 1965. Door in the Mountain: New and Collected Poems 1965–2003 won the 2004 National Book Award for Poetry. Her twelfth and latest collection, Break the Glass, is due out in 2010 from Copper Canyon Press.

Among Valentine's numerous fellowships and awards are a Guggenheim Fellowship, awards from the NEA, The Bunting Institute, The Rockefeller Foundation, The New York Council for the Arts, as well as the Maurice English Prize, the Teasdale Poetry Prize, The Poetry Society of America's Shelley Memorial Prize, et al. She has taught at Sarah Lawrence College, the Graduate Writing Program of New York University, Columbia University, and the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan, inter al. www.jeanvalentine.com. [Photo of Jean Valentine by Max Greenstreet.]

Also reading is the First Place winner of Hill-Stead's prestigious Sunken Garden Poetry Prize, Ginny Lowe Connors. An English teacher from West Hartford, Connecticut, Ms. Connors is the author of a poetry collection, Barbarians in the Kitchen (Antrim House) and editor of three poetry collections: Essential Love, To Love One Another and Proposing on the Brooklyn Bridge (Grayson Books). She has won numerous awards for her poetry, including the grand prize in Atlanta Review's International Poetry Competition and first prize in the "Winners Circle" poetry contest sponsored by the National Federation of State Poetry Societies. Her poetry appears in literary magazines such as Calyx, Caduceus, Connecticut Review, English Journal, Jane's Stories, Perigee, The Teacher's Voice and others, as well as in many anthologies. In 2003, Connors was named "Poet of the Year" by the New England Association of Teachers of English. Connors is on the executive board of the Connecticut Poetry Society. About her winning chapbook, Under the Porch, competition judge and poet Clare Rossini commented, "...the poet's eye is sharp and true, and her sense of form beautifully honed, so the epiphanies of these poems are found both in their insight and their music."

Rounding out the evening's readings will be Sunken Garden Poetry Prize Second-Place winner Kate Lebo. Ms. Lebo lives in Seattle and works for Richard Hugo House, a center for the literary arts. Her poems have appeared in Crab Creek Review, Smartish Pace, DMQ Review, Filter, and A River and Sound Review, and she was awarded a 2010 Soapstone Writing Residency. In addition to poetry, Ms. Lebo keeps a blog, Good Egg, "dedicated to home cooking… and pie." Of her winning manuscript, Sugarspill, Washington, Clare Rossini commented, "These poems crackle with energy… the music of the lines [is] often mesmerizing."

Music to be announced.

July 21, Wednesday
6:30 pm
Terrance Hayes
"First you'll marvel at his skill, his near-perfect pitch, his disarming humor, his brilliant turns of phrase. Then you'll notice the grace, the tenderness, the unblinking truth-telling just beneath his lines, the open and generous way he takes in our world." —Cornelius Eady, founder, Cave Canem

Recipient of numerous honors and awards, including a Whiting Writers Award, a Pushcart Prize, a Kate Tufts Discovery Award (for Muscular Music, 1999), a National Poetry Series selection (for Hip Logic, 2002) a Best American Poetry selection and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, Terrance Hayes is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Carnegie Mellon University. Other publications include Wind in a Box (Penguin, 2006) and Lighthead (Penguin, March 2010). Hayes lives in Pittsburgh, PA with his family.

Music to be announced.

August 4, Wednesday, 6:30 pm
Taylor Mali; Night of Fresh Voices

Taylor Mali is one of the most well-known poets to have emerged from the poetry slam movement, and one of the few people in the world to have no job other than that of poet. Eloquent, accessible, passionate, and often hilarious, Mali studied drama in Oxford with members of The Royal Shakespeare Company, and puts those skills of presentation to work in all his performances. He was one of the original poets to appear on the HBO series Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry and was the "Armani-clad villain" of Paul Devlin's 1997 documentary film SlamNation.

Author of two books of poetry, The Last Time As We Are (Write Bloody Books, 2009) and What Learning Leaves (Hanover, 2002), and four CDs of spoken word, Mali received a New York Foundation for the Arts Grant in 2001 to develop Teacher! Teacher!, a one-man show about poetry, teaching and math that won the jury prize for best solo performance at the 2001 Comedy Arts Festival.

Fresh Voices — five high school winners of Hill-Stead's Young Poets Competition selected from all corners of the state – represent some of the best writing being produced in Connecticut high schools today. These bright young adults will dazzle the audience with their verse and poise.

Music to be announced.

Please email poetry@hillstead.org or call 860.677.4787 ext 121 with questions.

To be added to the poetry mail list (email or postal mail) contact Cynthia Cagenello at cagenelloc@hillstead.org.