April: Full of Poetry (and not as cruel as February if you ask me)

The snow is actually melting, for real, and making some spectacular mud on our road. But if the weather holds, looks like we might be good and pretty dried out by week’s end. We’re ready up here in Northern New England, I can tell you.

And I decree that I have gathered enough announcements to warrant a catch-all blog post. Sorry it’s been kind of sparse. Things will pick up come summer, I swear.

So. In addition to allegedly being the “cruellest” month, April is National Poetry Month! And it’s jam-packed with Poetry Goodness.

I’ll kick off here by sharing that the Issue #6 of Sliver of Stone is up, and I’m honored to have a poem included. They’ve got a great format — very readable — and some tasty work. Pretty sexy poem by Ira Sukrungruang. I’m rubbing shoulders this month with Denise Duhamel and John McNally and Laura Madeline Wiseman and even Kevin McLellan, who I had the pleasure of finally meeting at this year’s AWP Conference in Boston.

I’m looking forward to a couple of readings as well — the Plymouth State University Eagle Pond reading series will be presenting Dick Allen (with an introductory reading by PSU student poet Kim Chandler) this Thursday, April 4, and Jorie Graham (with an introductory reading by PSU student poet Tyler Carignan) on Tuesday, April 30. Both readings are in the Smith Recital Hall at the Silver Center for the Arts at 7:00 P.M., and are FREE and open to the public.

I will also be doing a couple of readings this month — one on April 9 (also at Smith Recital Hall, part of Women of Words’ annual reading) on the theme of the “road trip.” Then, on Monday, April 29, I’m so pleased to be reading with my colleague, fiction writer Njelle Hamilton, at 7:00PM, in Frost Commons, on the Plymouth State campus.