Concord Poetry at the Library to Host Two Acclaimed Poets

On Sunday, March 10, at 3 pm, the Concord Poetry at the Library Series will host acclaimed poets Joan Houlihan and Frannie Lindsay who will read poems of the loss of loved ones, and the solace and emotional gains that can arise in the aftermath of grief. During a Q &A session, the poets will talk about their practice and the influences that have guided the writing of these devotional, elegiac, and celebratory poems. This free event, sponsored by the Friends of the Concord Free Public Library, includes a Question and Answer session and book-signings with light refreshments. The program will be held in the Periodical Room of the Main Library at 129 Main Street.

Joan Houlihan will read from her fifth book of poetry, Shadow-feast (Four Way Books) - a chronicle of the dying of her husband--the awareness, denial, pain, and hope surrounding incurable illness. “The collection’s title comes from a Japanese ceremony, a daily offering of miniature, meticulous meals, prepared for the ghost of a loved one. These poems, likewise exquisitely arranged, are distinct unflinching devotions to the realities of what we rarely notice and never say,” notes The Los Angeles Review . “Critics compare her to Emily Dickinson and I think I know why” says Grace Caliveri of the Washington Independent Review of Books. “They each distill language and feeling to a crystalline state that never tells a lie.”

A recipient of a Must-Read distinction from the Massachusetts Center for the Book, Houlihan is Founder and Director of the Colrain Poetry Manuscript Conference. She currently serves on the faculty of Lesley University’s Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing Program and is Professor of Practice in Poetry at Clark University.

Poet and classical pianist Frannie Lindsay will read from her fifth collection, If Mercy (The Word Works) whose “elegant fifth collection” notes Martha Collins, “ is simultaneously elegiac and celebratory, a tribute to both “gone things” and the beautiful that remains. Her primary subjects are human, old and diminished and dying; but her expansive vision encompasses the animal and reaches toward the divine.”

“One of our very best contemporary poets," says Terrence Hayes.

Lindsay’s work has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The American Poetry Review, and The Yale Review, among others, and in Best American Poetry 2014. Recipient of the 2008 Missouri Review Prize, she has held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

Submitted by Glenn Mitchell, Board Member, Friends of the Concord Free Public Library and Program Director of Poetry at the Library Series.