One of my favorite things to do is celebrate writers
and bring them to the attention of the Quiet Corner public. I mean, I really LOVE it.
Last year, Nichola Johnson, the one-woman whirlwind at the helm of The Complex for Performing Arts in Putnam, asked if I’d be interested in emceeing Spoken Word events, something she’d been wanting to do for years. Who needed to the think about it?! Not me. I was all in.
We held two events in 2017, each featured five writers, including poets, writers of fiction and non-fiction, playwrights, and songwriters. The best and most unexpected benefit of these events was bringing multiple generations together. This happened organically after the scheduled performers, when we opened the stage to the audience for open mic. There’s something especially resonant when a 60 year-old speaks about an enduring love followed by a 16 year old speak about having his heart broken.
The applause for each performer was consistent and warm, and totally addictive. What began as accident is now intentional: a celebration of diversity.
I’m over the moon to present five local writers next Thursday, March 1st 7 PM at the first Spoken Word of 2018.
Tim Peck is a noted composer and performer hailing from the Quiet Corner of Connecticut. He has held residencies at Le Moulin à Nef in Auvillar, France, The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Willapa Bay Air. Tim has produced two albums of original music: Rivulets and Ms. Matched. Currently, Tim is Artist-in-Residence and Director of Contemporary Music at Pomfret School, where he guides students through a centuries-old musical conversation, teaching courses in contemporary music, composition, and improvisation. Tim keeps an active performance calendar, and his upcoming shows can be found at his website www.tpeck.com.
Erin Reid is a student of Fine Arts and English at Framingham State University and Theatre Performance at the Hanover Theater Conservatory. She writes poetry and memoir where she lives in Oxford, MA while doting on her fluffy, black kitten Coco.
John Etheridge is an engineer and Digital Systems Enterprise Architect, a surprisingly ‘techie’ background for someone who also writes poetry. That tension between the sciences and the arts explains much about him. Born a Canadian, but now also an American, John is married to the long-suffering, but infinitely patient and wonderful Lyn, and has lived in New England for the past 20 years. Who knows, he may even retire here, if something can be done about these winters…
Parker Kalafus is a junior at the Woodstock Academy where he is also a tutor at the writing center. Parker enjoys writing outlandish short stories which range from comical to extremely morbid and has submitted one such works to the Connecticut Student Writers magazine at UConn. Parker also acts from time to time and has been in two school plays at Woodstock schools. When not consumed by homework, video games, writing or sketching, Parker will be found reading a wide variety of novels ranging from classics such as “Frankenstein,” “The Three Musketeers,” the entire James Bond series, and most recently “The Silence of the Lambs.” He hopes to attend Roger Williams University with a double major in architecture and psychology.
Bridget Tsemo is a speaker, a thinker, and writer who loves participating in the lives of her two extraordinary teenagers, Kayta and Mambi. She is the co-host of “The Lighthouse” a radio show on arts and culture on WBVC 91.1 FM every Tuesday night from 7 to 8 PM. Bridget has a completed manuscript on nineteenth-century African-American writers that she can’t wait to share with the world as soon as she can get a publisher to knock down her door and demand to publish it. In the past two years, Bridget has been writing poetry and essays about her life as a mother, teacher, parent, and student in the 21st century. Bridget is an English teacher and English Department Chair at Pomfret School.