Poetic Inspiration – Readings & Reflections

Community partners Westport Arts Advisory, Westport Arts Center and Westport Library will host an evening of poetry and art at the Westport Arts Center on Thursday, February 1, 2018 at 7pm as part of the town-wide WestportREADS celebration of “Regeneration” by Pat Barker. The event is inspired by characters in Barker’s novel, which combines both fictional and real characters including three prominent British poets, whose response to WWI changed the landscape of modern poetry. In honor of this legacy, the program will feature readings by modern poets, whose work responds to our times and the challenges we face. Over 50 submissions were received from high school and adult poets, with 12 selected for the program. This evening of readings is set within Ward Shelley’s What Keeps Mankind Alive exhibition at the Westport Arts Center, “An ideal setting for this collaboration of spoken word and visual art,” a Westport Arts Advisory representative stated. Like the poets, the artist, “seeks to tease out narratives from history and culture.” The exhibition includes The Last Library, (an ongoing collaboration between Shelley and artist Douglas Paulson), a room sized installation of bookcases and 3,000 books that according to the artists “should have been written, but haven’t.” Among the featured poets will be Norwalk Poet Laureate Laurel S. Peterson and Award winning poet, Charles Rafferty.   Selected poets include:

• Nicole Arellano
• Dan Burstein
• Mary Grace Dembeck
• Richard Duffee
• Christine Fountain
• Madelyn Hoyt
• Richard Karvitz
• Alison Akiko McBain
• Jessica Noyes McEntee
• Sam Pattinson
• Jenipher Sage-Robison
• Nicole Winder

The poets will be joined by Cultural Alliance of Fairfield County’s David Green, actors Carole Schweid, Sam Mink and artist Miggs Burroughs who will read selected poems from WWI. Ward Shelley’s What Keeps Mankind Alive will be on exhibit through March 2, 2018 at The Westport Arts Center, 51 Riverside Avenue, Westport, CT. The Westport Arts Advisory Committee is committed to increasing public awareness of the Town of Westport's cultural resources: its artists, artworks and institutions. The committee members are appointed by the First Selectman to serve a two-year term. WestportREADS is an annual program sponsored by the Westport Library, dedicated to strengthening the community through the shared experience of a book. WestportREADS 2018 is funded by the estate of Jerry A. Tishman. For more information and a full list of events, please visit westportlibrary.org