Inspired Berkshires – readings by Berkshire poets about the Berkshires

Inspired Berkshires at the Stockbridge Library

cosponsored by Arts Alive at Chesterwood

Celebrating Poetry Month

Twelve Berkshire Poets on the Berkshires

Join us on Saturday, April 22 at 4:00 p.m. at the Stockbridge Library to celebrate the Berkshires and Poetry Month! Each of these poets will read for about five minutes with a Q & A to follow.  See below for poet bios!

Owen Lewis is the author of three collections, most recently Field Light (Mass Book Award “Must Read” selection, NYCBigBook Award Distinguished Favorite). Honors include the Jean Pedrick Chapbook Award (New England Poetry Club) the International Hippocrates Award for Poetry and Medicine, and the International Guernsey Poetry Prize. He teaches Narrative Medicine at Columbia University, Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. www.owenlewispoet.com. Stockbridge, MA

J. Mae Barizo is the author of The Cumulus Effect (Four Way Books, 2015) and Tender Machines (Tupelo Press, 2023). She is also the recipient of fellowships and awards from Bennington College, Mellon Foundation, Critical Minded, Jerome Foundation and Poets House. Recent writing appears in Poetry, Ploughshares, Esquire, Los Angeles Review of Books, Paris Review Daily, Boston Review, BookForum, among others. Her opera on migration and climate change, DRIFT, is in development at the National Opera Center. She teaches in the MFA at The New School. New York City and Hillsdale.

Jayne Benjulian is the author of Five Sextillion Atoms. She was an Ossabaw Island Project Fellow; teaching fellow at Emory University; lecturer in the Graduate Program in Theater at San Francisco State University; and Fulbright Teaching Fellow in Lyon, France. Next year, she will be an artist resident at Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Ireland. Housatonic, MA

Richard M. Berlin is the author of four poetry collections and two poetry chapbooks. His poetry has appeared in the Psychiatric Times every month for the past twenty five years, and Psychiatric Times has been broadcasting his weekly  “Any Good Poem” series since the start of the pandemic. A forty year resident of the Berkshires, he serves on the faculty of the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Richmond, MA

Patty Crane is author of the poetry collections Bell I Wake To and something flown, as well as Bright Scythe, her translations of Swedish Nobel laureate, Tomas Tranströmer. Her translations of Tranströmer’s complete collected works is due out from Copper Canyon Press in fall 2023. Her award-winning work has been widely published and supported by MacDowell fellowships. Dalton, MA

David Giannini’s most recent books include The Dawn of Nothing Important; The Future Only Rattles When You Pick It Up; and In a Moment We May Be Strangely Blended. He was nominated for the National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize. He received a 2021 Finalist Award from The North American Poetry Review. Becket, MA

Colin Harrington is an educator, formerly an Interpretive Guide at the Emily Dickinson Museum (Amherst, MA), currently a Gallery Teacher at MASS MoCA (North Adams, MA) and he was the Events Manager at The Bookstore & Get Lit Wine Bar in Lenox. He is the author of the chapbooks, Asking Me to See: Seven Poems of Japan (MidGardn’ Press) and Sweetheart Deals (New Feral Press). Windsor, MA

Judy Katz’s debut poetry collection, How News Travels, was selected as the winner of the 2021 Gerald Cable Book Award, Silverfish Review Press.  Her poems have appeared on Poetry Daily and in The New York Times Book Review, Salamander, The Women’s Review of Books, Plume, upstreet and in such publications as Best Indie Lit New England, The Best of the Bellevue Literary Review and Treelines: an anthology of 21st century American poems.  Lakeville, Ct.

Nathan McClain is the author of two collections of poetry — Previously Owned (2022) and Scale (2017) — both from Four Way Books. A Cave Canem fellow, he teaches at Hampshire College and serves as poetry editor for the Massachusetts Review. Springfield, MA

Barry Sternleib’s work has appeared in Poetry, Southern Review, Yale Review, & Sewanee Review. He is the author of four chapbooks and Sole Impression, winner of the 2020 Codhill Press Poetry Award. From 1986-2016, he edited Mad River Press, printing handcrafted, letterpress poetry broadsides and chapbooks. His archive is housed in The Chapin Library at Williams College. Richmond, MA

Hilde Weisert, author of The Scheme of Things (2015) Awards include the 2017 Gretchen Warren Award (New England Poetry Club), 2016 Tiferet Journal Poetry Award, the 2008 Lois Cranston Poetry Prize, and 2009, 2016, 2020 Fellowships, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She is president of the Sandisfield Arts Center in western Massachusetts and co-founder of the Society for Veterinary Medicine and Literature. www.hildeweisert.com. Sandisfield, MA

Anne Whitehouse’s poetry collections include The Surveyor’s Hand, Blessings and Curses, The Refrain, Meteor Shower, and Outside from the Inside, the last three from Dos Madres Press. Ethel Zine and Micro Press has published three poetry chapbooks about women artists: Surrealist Muse (about Leonora Carrington), Escaping Lee Miller, and Frida. She is also the author of a novel, Fall Love. Millerton, NY

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