HANSON PARK CONSERVANCY PRESENTS: A NIGHT OF POETRY-THE POETS ARE COMING!

The poets are coming! It's National Poetry Month so why not join us for an evening of poetry read by three accomplished and published poets? Deborah LaVeglia and John McDermott hale from Cranford and Tom Plante lives in Fanwood. Afterwards, we'll open the floor to any aspiring poets any aspiring poet who would like to read one poem.

 Deborah LaVeglia is director of PoetsWednesday which runs out of the Barron Arts Center in Woodbridge. She was part of the graduate Poetics Program at NYU. She loves poetry and the music of language. She grew up in a cold water flat in the Ironbound section of Newark, and has performed at readings throughout NJ, NY and PA. She often works in schools as a visiting poet and has had residencies in the Scotch Plains/Fanwood school district. She also founded and directed a poetry program at St. Michael's School in Cranford for grades K-8. She is co-founder of the "Can of Corn" poetry series which collects non-perishable foods for the homeless and has been published in many poetry journals and anthologies including Tiferet, Lips, Negative Capability, and PLR. Her most treasured publication is an essay she wrote on Anne Sexton which was published in College English Notes.

 John McDermott has lived in New Jersey for most of his 58 years and has taught English in China and Japan. He is an associate professor of English as a Second Language at Union County College and former editor of US1 Worksheets. He has been a featured poet at the Dodge Poetry Festival and has served as a Dodge Poet, working with teachers and students in workshops at high schools and teen arts festivals for many years. His poems have appeared in magazines including Paterson Literary Review, Lips, and Frogpond, as well as Mainichi Daily. He has published 2 chapbooks, Bits and Pieces and Along the Way. His first full length book of his poetry, The Long Way Home was published in 2005

Tom Plante grew up on Long Island in East Rockaway, New York. His first real job was delivering Newsday six days a week while in grammar school. After a couple false starts at college, Tom traveled to the West Coast, where he earned a B.A. in Geography from the University of California at Berkeley. He was a writer for the weekly Berkeley Barb in the 1970s and he participated in poetry readings throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. Tom published a literary magazine, Berkeley Works, and labored in the wholesale book business before moving to New Jersey in 1986. He continued his journalistic work with the Irish Echo in New York City, the Scotch Plains-Fanwood Times, and the Courier News in Bridgewater, NJ. In 1996, he was awarded a first prize for editorial writing by the New Jersey Press Association.

Since 1988, Tom has edited EXIT 13 Magazine, an annual journal of poetry that he publishes in Fanwood, New Jersey. He estimates that he has published the work of more than 700 poets in his magazines. As an editor, he has participated in a variety of festivals and workshops, including the Union County Teen Arts Festival, the Long Branch Poetry Festival, the Walt Whitman Poetry Festival in Ocean Grove, and the annual Celebration of New Jersey's Literary Journals held in West Caldwell. Tom is a co-director of the Fanwood Arts Council. The most recent collection of his poetry is My Back Yardstick (CC Marimbo Communications, Berkeley, 1998).

A Night of Poetry: