Fall/Winter Reading Series at the Hooker-Duhnam Theater

Where out of town poets join regional and local poets for a reading series in downtown Brattleboro on the first Saturday of every month.

Place: Hooker-Duhnam Theater
139 Main Street
Brattleboro, VT

Time: 7:00 PM Reception to follow
Free

Confirmed Dates:

November 3, 2007
Regie O'Hare Gibson & Chard deNiord

Boston poet/performer Regie O'Hare Gibson will join Chard deNiord of Putney in a lively reading and performance. While no two poets would seem as different aesthetically as Regie and Chard, both speakers are masters of the ecstatic mode of the revelatory that navigates ordinary realities toward a purity of language and depth of feeling even in these dark times.

Poet, songwriter, author, workshop facilitator, and educator Regie Gibson has performed, taught, and lectured at schools, universities, theaters and various other venues on two continents and in seven countries. Most recently in Havana Cuba. Regie and his work appear in the New Line Cinema film love jones, based largely on events in his life. The poem entitled "Brother to the Night (A Blues for Nina)" appears on the movie soundtrack and is performed by the film's star, Larenz Tate. Regie performed "Hey Nappyhead" in the film with world-renowned percussionist and composer Kahil El Zabar, composer of the score for the musical The Lion King.

Regie has personally worked with: Gwendolyn Brooks (Poet Laureate of Illinois & Pulitzer Prize winner for poetry.), The Last Poets, Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Roy Ayers, Fareed Haque, Kurt Vonnegut, David Amram (Composed music & collaborated with Jack Kerouac & Allen Ginsberg.), Harold Levi, The Monks of the Drepong Gamong Monastery, members of the world famous AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians), Mos Def (Hip Hop artist), David Murray (Saxophonist with Miles Davis.), Sterling Plumpp (Professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago. & an author), Marc Smith (creator of the international (Poetry Slam phenomenon), Patricia Smith (3 time individual National Poetry Slam champ, columnist & author.), Reg E. Gaines (Writer of 3Bring On The Noise, Bring On The Funk2 with Savion Glover.), and many other artist in musical genres including World, Celtic, Hip Hop, Jazz, Funk, Blues, Salsa, Andelusian, East Indian, House, and European Classical.

Regie has taught, lectured and facilitated workshops for: the Cambridge Poetry Festival at Harvard University, the Poetry Center of the Art Institute of Chicago, Detroit Black Writers Guild, Inside Out of Detroit, MI, University of Chicago Lab School, Northwestern University, Roosevelt University, University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Eastern Michigan University, National Louis University, Washtenaw State College, Youth Speaks of San Francisco, CA, University Without Walls of San Antonio, TX, as a Chernin Center for the Arts Community Writers Fellow, a writer in residence at the Effi O. Ellis Center sponsored through National Louis University, and for public schools systems throughout the States of Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, California, Rhode Island, and Philadelphia. Regie is the 1998 National Poetry Slam Individual Champion, was selected one of Chicago Tribune's Artist of the Year for Excellence (1998) for his poetry, will co-judge the Chicago Sun-Times 2001 Poetry Competition with Marc Smith (Creator of the international (Poetry Slam phenomenon.) and Mark Strand (University of Chicago professor & 1999 Pulitzer Prize winner for poetry), and is regularly featured on National Public Radio.


Regie has toured with the Chicago Mask Ensemble, performing dramatic and poetic adaptations of common myths from around the world. Co-produced the play "The Mystery of Fire Bread" with Frau Marianne Buchwald, while performing in Europe with the Sharnier Theater in the cities of Hanover, Frankfurt, Berlin, and the Literature Haus in Hamburg, Germany. Performed at the Night of Sacred Music in Chicago. His original works of poetry have been dramatized and scored by classical flautist and professor Janet Misurell Mitchell and produced and directed by Eric Rosen for the Steppenwolf Theater's Words on Fire production.

In 1999 Regie performed for the award-winning Traffic Series at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theater where Regie adapted the work of Kurt Vonnegut. Mr. Vonnegut was in attendance, and raved about the eloquence with which his work was rendered. "When you perform, you are supersonic and in the stratosphere where you can see the Earth really as a ball, moist, blue-green. You sing and chant for all of us. Nobody gets left out." -- Kurt Vonnegut

In 1999 Regie founded the Church of The Funky Word, a literary and musical arts ensemble utilizing ancient, contemporary and original literary text combined with world music and rituals from various world cultures.

Regie is widely published in anthologies, magazines and journals, such as Power Lines, An Anthology of Poetry along with three Pulitzer-Prize winning poets Gwendolyn Brooks, Yosef Komunyakaa, and Lisel Mueller, his first full-length book of poetry Storms Beneath The Skin (EM Press) was released in 2001. www.em-press.com

Chard deNiord is the author of three books of poetry, Asleep in the Fire (University of Alabama Press, 1990), Sharp Golden Thorn (Marsh Hawk Press, 2003) and Night Mowing, (University of Pittsburgh Pres, 2005). His poems and essays have appeared recently in The American Scholar, The New England Review, Gettysburg Review, The Pushcart Prize, Best American Poetry, The Iowa Review, Poetry East, Agni, Green Mountains Review, The Harvard Review, The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares and The Kenyon Review. He is an associate professor of English at Providence College and is the founder and former program director of the low residency MFA Program in Poetry at New England College.


December 8, 2007
Louise Landes Levi

International poet, classical sarangi musician, scholar, and translator of Rene Daumal and Henri Michaux, Louise Landes Levi has traveled the globe for three decades. Her poetry books include, Banana Baby (Supernova, 2006), Avenue A & 9th Street (Shivastan, 2004), Chorma (Porto dei Santi, 2000) Guru Punk, (Cool Grove Press, 1999), Sweet on my Lips, Love poems of Mira Bai (Cool Grove Press, 1997), The House Lamps Have Been Lit (Supernova, 1996), Extinctions, (Left Hand Books, 1993), and Concerto, (City Lights, Accordian Series, 1988). Rene Daumal’s Rasa was published by New Directions in 1982 and most recently, Toward Totality (Vers La Completude) & Selected Works 1929-1973 of Henri Michaux (Shivastan, 2006) and Toward Totality I / Vers La Completude (Longhouse, 2006). Reviews, essays and poems have been published online in Big Bridge, Jacket, and Rain Taxi, among other publications.