Gary Whitehead will read from his full-length poetry collection, Climbing the Tree of Heaven Back Down to Earth, recently accepted for publication by Salmon Publishing. He has previously authored two chapbooks, both winners of national poetry competitions: Walking Back to Providence (Sow's Ear Press, '97) and A Cool, Dry Place (White Eagle Coffee Store Press, '00). He has been awarded residencies at the Heinrich Boll Cottage in Ireland, Blue Mountain Center in upstate NY, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA. In addition to many other awards, he very recently received a National Endowment for the Humanities Institute Fellowship and an Individual Artist's Fellowship from the New York State Foundation for the Arts. His poems, stories, and essays have appeared in such publications as The Christian Science Monitor, Connecticut Review, DoubleTake, Poetry Ireland Review, Western Humanities Review, Verse, and Yankee. He teaches English at Tenafly High School, Tenafly, NJ, and lives in Warwick, NY, where he is editor and publisher of Defined Providence Press.
Although she learned she had won the competition last fall, Sondra Upham's chapbook, Freight, based on the experience of a rape and its aftermath, is just now coming out in print. Marie Ponsot, the nationally-known poet who was the 2000 judge, commented:
"Freight is full of real poems. They spring up spare and clear, out of the thickness of experience. They trust the energy of each truly perceived moment to be radiant and poignant. And it is. Their human tunes leave me grateful for delight and for discovery."
Ms. Upham grew up in Fremont, NE and received an M.A. from the University of Massachusetts, Boston, where she won the Academy of American Poets competition in 1992. Her poems have appeared in many journals, including Field, Prairie Schooner, The New Virginia Review, and Phoebe. Her awards include The Chester H. Jones National Poetry Competition in 1992 for "Living with the Memory of Rape" and The Hope Exhibition, in Riverhead, NY, 1994, for "Rape." For twenty-two years she was a high school English teacher and she is currently a poet-in-the-schools. She lives with her husband in Scottsdale, AZ, and Plymouth, MA.
Suggested Donation: $5 ($3 for members)
This reading made possible in part by grants from the Bydale Foundation, the Gannett Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts; with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency; and by Westchester Arts Council with funds from Westchester County Government, corporations and individuals.