Poetry at St. John’s

The Ann Hutt Browning Poetry Series

November 10th, 2024 at 3:00 PM

The Ann Hutt Browning Poetry Series is asking the community:
What poem or reading brings you comfort?

The Ann Hutt Browning Series is inviting community members to share the poems or reflections that offer them particular solace at a gathering on November 10, at 3 p.m. at St. John’s Church in Ashfield. This event will be the first step in bringing together submissions for an anthology entitled “Let Evening Come” to be published in 2025 as part of the church’s 200th anniversary celebration. It is hoped that this collection will have 200 passages and become a resource for people as they experience the most tender moments in their daily life or at its end when they need words to see them through.

The genesis of the project came from Carol Purington, the treasured poet of Colrain, who died on December 8, 2021. Before her death her friends promised to bring this book to fruition and will dedicate the volume to her memory. “Let Evening Come” is a poem by Jane Kenyon and will begin the afternoon reading.

In addition to bringing one selection to share before a microphone at the event, participants are invited to bring hard copies of any additional readings to submit for consideration for publication in the anthology. The submissions may also include their own work.

Ann’s daughter, Sarah Browning, a poet in her own right, will emcee the program. The gathering is free and open to all, and refreshments will be served.

Note: If you are unable to attend the event, you may send your suggestions to Let Evening Come, St. John’s Church, Box 253, Ashfield, MA 01330, drop them off at the entry way to the church, or email them to todd_susan@msn.com.

Past Events

Cheryl Savageau

CANCELLED DUE TO ILLNESS

Cheryl Savageau is an Abenaki poet, memoirist, storyteller, and visual/textile artist. Her latest book, Out of the Crazywoods, isa memoir thatnavigates her experience of living with bipolar/manic depressive illness. She has three books of poetry, Mother/Land, an “unhistory” of the Northeast; Dirt Road Home, which was a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize and nominated for a Pulitzer Prize; and Home Country. Her children’s book, Muskrat Will Be Swimming, was a Smithsonian Notable Book and won the Skipping Stones Award for children’s environmental literature and the Wordcraft Circle’s Best Children’s Book of the Year award. She has won Fellowships in Poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Massachusetts Artists Fellowship Program. In her fourth residency she was MacDowell’s Isabella Gardner Fellow for 2022. Savageau has mentored Native writers through Wordcraft Circle of Native Poets and Storytellers, and was awarded Mentor of the Year in 1998. She has taught workshops through Gedakina, and is former editor of Dawnland Voices 2.0. Her work has appeared most recently in Yellow Medicine Review, The Cape Cod Review, and in Ghost Fishing: An Eco Justice Anthology. She teaches Indigenous literatures, speculative fiction, and creative writing at the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College. Her visual art has been exhibited throughout New England, including the Abbé Museum in Bar Harbor; in the exhibit “Awikhigan: Evoking Inigenous Stories and Landscapes” at Shakespeare and Company; and is currently on view in the “Momentum” exhibit at Brown University.

Co-sponsored with the Massachusetts Arts Council