Mid-Summer Poetry and Photographs

Friday, August 7, 2015 at 7:30 PM
 
Four Poets
Carol Edelstein, Amy Dryansky, Sarah Sousa, and Michelle Valois

One Photographer
Kate Way
 
From left to right: Carol Edelstein, Amy Dryansky, Sarah Sousa, and Michelle Valois
 
 
                                                                                                Kate Way
 
A. P. E. Gallery
126 Main Street
Northampton, MA
 
Free, open to the public, accessible.
Book signing, photographs for sale, and refreshments.

  SUBMISSION PERIOD NOW OPEN:

Perugia Press Prize
for a First or Second Book by a Woman

Prize: $1000 and publication

Entry must be submitted electronically
or postmarked no later than November 15, 2015.
 
Grayling
 
by Jenifer Browne Lawrence

 Winner of the 2015 Perugia Press Prize
 
Set in the temperate rainforest of Southeast Alaska and the Pacific Coast, Grayling moves through the interior wilderness of a woman shaped by and inhabiting the rough country of her upbringing. Dorianne Laux calls the book, “musical, magical, and skeptical.” The poems are short, and ask to be read slowly.
 
 
Late to Singing

Here in this house where strapping tape keeps the carpet edge
from raveling, a girl pushes away her breakfast plate.

I won’t need you, she says, her cheeks white as butter.

Mildew spots the curtain’s hem. Beyond the window, the sea spits
up undigested sky.

A towhee hops to a huckleberry bush, bounces on a bare twig like
a child on someone’s knee.

Here in the overcast kitchen the only cheerful thing is the
humming refrigerator. A woman scrapes two plates into
a pail.

It hurts, this leave-taking, a splinter pushing through skin to air.
Pushing, like a salmon in the net, gills ripped and running
scarlet.

I won’t need you, the girl repeats, forgetting her birth, how
she drowned in the garnet cushion made to keep her,
how her breath came late and gray as spring.

 
Read another sample poem and buy the book here.  
 
Jenifer Browne Lawrence has readings scheduled—
from Washington State to Massachusetts.   
Check out when shell be near you.
 
 
 
 
Perugia Press
PO Box 60364, Florence, MA  01062