Four Poets
Coordinated by Paul Forte
Sunday, October 23rd, 2011, from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m.

Hera Gallery is pleased to present an evening of poetry coordinated by Paul Forte. Featured poets will be Peter Covino, Jan Keough, Lisa Starr, and Paul Forte. These readings will occur in an intimate gallery setting, each night featuring reading by three poets who will recite selections of their recent works.

Peter Covino, poet, translator, and essayist is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Rhode Island. His poetry collections, both from New Issues, are The Right Place to Jump (2012), and Cut Off the Ears of Winter, winner of the 2007 PEN America/ Osterweil Award. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in American Poetry Review, Colorado Review, Gulf Coast, The Paris Review, and The Yale Review, among others. He also co-edited, Essays on Italian American Literature and Culture for Bordighera Press, CUNY (2011).

Jan Keough enjoys living atop RI in Cumberland. Her poems have appeared in print, online, and most recently in the Naugatuck River Review. She is a co-founder of the Origami Poems Project which distributes free micro-books of original poetry at various venues throughout the state. Along with her musically-gifted husband, Kevin, and a couple of irreverent mini-schnauzers, her mainstay has been the decades-long practice of yoga meditation.

Lisa Starr, Rhode Island’s Poet Laureate, divides her time among a variety of interests, her children, and her passion for poetry. She is a two-time recipient of the Rhode Island Fellowship for Poetry. Starr is also a founding member of Ocean State Poets, an organization that has established dozens of poetry circles in typically marginalized communities.

In April of 2009 Starr assembled more than a dozen US State Poets Laureate for Poetry for Hope, during which the visiting poets worked with more than 7,000 Rhode Islanders (most of them students and teachers) during the five day event.

Starr’s third collection of poems, Mad With Yellow, was published in September, 2008. She is the author of two other books: This Place Here (2001) and Days of Dogs and Driftwood (1993). Her poems have been published in dozens of journals. A poet by choice and an innkeeper by necessity, Starr lives in and operates the Hygeia House, a 10-room inn on Block Island which is also home to the Block Island Poetry Project, now in its 9th year. The brightest lights of her life are her two children, Orrin (15) and Millie(13) her beloved dog, Brother, and Jewel, her wild, new little cat. When time permits, she writes her heart out.

Paul Forte is a visual artist but also writes poems and essays. A resident of Rhode Island since 1987, Forte has exhibited at the San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco (1975, 1976, 1983); A Space Gallery, Toronto (1978); 80 Langton Street, San Francisco (1981); The Center for the Visual Arts, Oakland (1986); The Wadsworth Athenaeum, Hartford 1991); the Kim Foster Gallery, New York City (1998); Hera Gallery, Wakefield (2001, 2003), and Francis Naumann Fine Art, New York City (2007, 2008). Forte’s work is included in the Sol Lewitt Collection, Chester, Connecticut; The Museum of Modern Art,New York City (Artist’s books); and the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut, among others. Forte is a past recipient of a National Endowment Fellowship (1978), and a Pollack-Krasner Fellowship (1990).

A Poetry Series
Coordinated by Julie Hassett
Sunday, October 9th, 3:00 – 5:00
Sunday, November 6th, 3:00 – 5:00

Hera Gallery is pleased to present two nights of poetry coordinated by Julie Hassett. Featured poets will be David O’Connell, Jacob nelson, Leith MacArthur, Lori Desrosier, Julie Danho, and Kim Baker. These readings will occur in an intimate gallery setting, each night featuring reading by three poets who will recite selections of their recent works.

Reading on October 9th will be David O’Connell, Jacob Nelson, and Leith MacArthur.
David O’Connell received an M.F.A. in creative writing from Ohio State University. His poems have appeared in RATTLE, Fugue, Drunken Boat, Bryant Literary Review, and Boxcar Poetry Review, among other journals. His work was awarded a Rhode Island State Council of the Arts fellowship in 2009. Jacob Nelson graduated with his MA in English from the University of Rhode Island, where he became the Associate Editor for Poetry of The Ocean State Review, the University’s literary arts journal. At URI the Department of English awarded him first place in the graduate division in the Nancy Potter Poets Contest. Leith MacArthur has written many short stories and poems, but his true passion is to be found, and expressed, in novels. As well as being a writer, MacArthur has been, at one time or another, a personal life coach, clinical hypnotherapist, avid mountain climber and hiker, and musician.
Speaking on October 9th will be Lori Desrosier, Julie Danho, and Kim Baker. Lori Desrosiers’ first full-length collection of poems, The Philosopher’s Daughter, is forthcoming from Salmon Poetry in 2012. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, and she is editor and publisher of Naugatuck River Review, a journal of narrative poetry. Julie Danho received an MFA in creative writing from Ohio State University. Her poems and essays have appeared in Barrow Street, Southern Poetry Review, Mid-American Review, and West Branch, among others. She received a 2012 Fellowship in Poetry and a 2010 Poetry Merit Award from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts. Kim Baker uses her words to end violence against women, and performs in the annual Until the Violence Stops Festival Providence. She has been published both online and in print, and has also been featured on Rhode Island NPR broadcast. This I Believe.

These programs are presented with partial support from The Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, Rhode Island State Council of the Humanities, Hera Educational Foundation, and The Friends of Hera. Hera Gallery is free and open to the public and is accessible to persons with disabilities. Parking is available.