Friday, October 23, 2020
Jackson, a poet, was a young faculty member joining the English department from Xavier University in New Orleans. Fogel, a Henry James scholar and university administrator, arrived from Louisiana State University to serve as UVM’s 25th president. The two met that fall at an English department picnic, recalled Fogel, who’s now a professor in the department.
“I met Major, read some of his poems, and immediately began [working] from the president’s office and made sure that we retained him as long as we could,” Fogel said.
That effort was successful for nearly two decades: Jackson, 52, will leave UVM at the end of the semester for Vanderbilt University, where he’ll be the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of English. During his tenure at UVM, Jackson emerged as a prominent American poet of his generation, publishing four volumes of poetry, including this year’s The Absurd Man, and editing the 2019 volume of The Best American Poetry.
Tags: Major Jackson , University of Vermont , Vanderbilt University , poetry , writer , books , Web Only , Image
Thursday, October 8, 2020
Glück served as Vermont’s poet laureate — known then as “state poet” — from 1994 to 1998, and as U.S. poet laureate 2003 to 2004.
Tags: Louise Glück , poems , poetry , Nobel Prize , Swedish Academy , Vermont , Web Only , Image
Monday, September 14, 2020
Virtual Bookstock kicks off on Thursday, September 17, and continues monthly through the end of the year. The first guest is poet Reuben Jackson, in conversation with author Jenna Blum.
Tags: Bookstock , Reuben Jackson , Jason Lutes , Francois Clemmons , Nikita Stewart , poetry , literature , Web Only , Image
Monday, July 22, 2019
The Ruth Stone Foundation is a nonprofit honoring the legacy of the former Vermont Poet Laureate and National Book Award winner. Stone owned the house from 1956 until her death in 2011, though it sat unoccupied for several years. The foundation has been working to repair the house since 2011, aiming to turn it into a space for writers retreats and workshops.
A majority of the carpentry thus far has been done by the family and volunteers, including Ruth's granddaughter Bianca Stone and her husband Ben Pease, both poets. They think the house was built around 1800. It's listed on the National Registry of Historic Places because of Ruth Stone's importance to the state.
Tags: Ruth Stone , Bianca Stone , Ben Pease , Ruth Stone Foundation , Web Only , Image
Thursday, July 18, 2019
Oliver won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1984 and the National Book Award for Poetry in 1992. She also had New England connections, teaching at Bennington College from 1996 to 2001 and living in Provincetown, Mass. for many years.
Oliver’s work is ubiquitous across Instagram, and read at both weddings and funerals. A New York Times obituary called her “a phenomenon: a poet whose work sold strongly.” When she died in January, the loss was felt not just by the poetry community, but by many fans outside it.
“Mary Oliver’s poetry is [about] more than other poets reading her,” said Vermont poet Laura Foley. “She didn’t put herself up on a pedestal. Her words are very clear, she uses images from nature. And she has a message, which is, ‘Slow down, look around you.’”
Foley wrote a poem called “It Matters” upon hearing of Oliver’s death that borrows and appreciates various lines of Oliver’s poetry, which are presented in italics. Foley said she knew these lines by heart when she sat down to write the poem.
“It matters that I clutch / my stack of her books—those fields of light—” she wrote, “now that her body has gone / into the cottage of darkness.”
Foley's poem and others will be featured in Homage to Mary Oliver in Poetry and Dance on Thursday, July 25, ArtisTree Community Arts Center & Gallery in South Pomfret at 7:30 p.m. The multidisciplinary performance kicks off Bookstock, an annual literary festival that takes place in Woodstock from Friday to Sunday, July 26 to 28.
Tags: Bookstock , Mary Oliver , Peg Brightman , Laura Foley , poetry , poetry slam , dance , Web Only , Image
Tuesday, April 2, 2019
This week, the longtime executive director of Spectrum Youth & Family Services in Burlington was informed that his one-man show, “So Shines a Good Deed,” was chosen from among hundreds of applications for inclusion in the 2019 United Solo Theatre Festival in New York City.
The annual event, now in its 10th year, claims to be the world's largest solo-performance festival, featuring storytelling, puppetry, dance, multimedia, improv, magic, drama and stand-up comedy. The festival will be held in October in the newly renovated Theatre Row Building on 42nd Street, in the heart of Manhattan's theater district.
Tags: Mark Redmond , Spectrum Youth & Family Services , the Moth Radio Hour , storytelling , United Solo Theatre Festival , Web Only , Image
Monday, March 19, 2018
Twice postponed due to inclement weather, the event at the BCA Center consisted of a writing workshop led by slam poets and educators Rajnii Eddins and Denise Casey, as well as an open mic session.
Tags: Young Writers Project , Rajnii Eddins , Denise Casey , Alex Haag , Emma Haag , Isabel Blakenbaker , Ella Staats , Vermont Public Radio , Image , Web Only
Friday, March 9, 2018
In recent years, Amir had become something of a cult figure in certain Vermont circles. Using his friend, longtime Vermont Public Radio jazz DJ Reuben Jackson, as a conduit, Amir — and Khadijah, increasingly — would post scattered thoughts and musings via Jackson's Facebook page. Amir's often lyrical dispatches on everything from politics to race to music to the daily comings and goings at his HangTime Barber Shop in Motown inspired a devoted audience among Jackson's online friends and followers.
Tags: Reuben Jackson , Amir Yasin , Khadijah Rollins , Vermont Public Radio , Image , Web Only
Tuesday, October 3, 2017
The book follows the newly married Liesl as she raises her absent husband's three children in the height of World War II in Nazi Germany. Liesl and her husband, Frank, are
While the family is perhaps safe from Nazi persecution, they must survive dwindling food supplies, Allied air strikes and one child's mysterious illness, which puts him at risk of being sent to Hadamar, a psychiatric hospital infamous for mass sterilizations and murder.
Tags: Maria Hummel , Rice Memorial High School , Burlington , books , Motherland , Image , Web Only
Tuesday, September 26, 2017
Pollitt has written for the Nation since 1980, and many of her columns have been compiled into three volumes: Reasonable Creatures: Essays on Women and Feminism, Subject to Debate: Sense and Dissents on Women, Politics, and Culture and Virginity or Death! And Other Social and Political Issues of Our Time. Her most recent book, Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights, was published by Picador in 2015 and is a vehement argument for dispelling cultural stigma around abortion.
Hobson teaches in the Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies department at the University of Albany, State University of New York. She is the author of Venus in the Dark: Blackness and Beauty in Popular Culture and Body as Evidence: Mediating Race, Globalizing Gender, and a contributor to Ms. magazine.
Seven Days spoke with both Pollitt and Hobson by phone, asking some (big) questions prior to their Middlebury appearance.
Tags: katha pollitt , janell hobson , feminism , Image , Web Only