The Public Library of Brookline

Brookline Poetry Series

The Brookline Poetry Series meets once a month on Sunday afternoons, September through May, normally in Hunneman Hall at the Public Library of Brookline Main Branch (361 Washington St., Brookline, MA 02445). Usually, one or two established poets read, followed by an open mike. You may contact the organizers via email.

1:30 PM • Doors open
1:45 PM • Open mike sign-up
2 – 4 PM • Poetry readings

N.B. Usually the third Sunday of the month. On rare occasions, this may vary to accommodate holidays or special Library events, so be sure to check the Library Calendar or this page before attending. (Also, all meetings are held at the Main Library if possible, but on very rare occasions we have had to move to the Coolidge Corner Branch because of a scheduling conflict.

Featured Readers

Sep 18, 2011 • David Ferry

Note that the Sept. 18, 2011 meeting ONLY will be held at the Coolidge Corner Branch Library (31 Pleasant St.) instead of at the Main Library because of a scheduling conflict.

David Ferry was born in Orange, New Jersey. He completed his education at Amherst College and Harvard University, and served as a Sergeant in the United States Army Air Force from 1943 to 1946.

His books of poetry and translation include The Georgics of Virgil (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006); The Epistles of Horace: A Translation (2001); Of No Country I Know: New and Selected Poems and Translations (University of Chicago Press, 1999); The Eclogues of Virgil (1999); The Odes of Horace: A Translation (1998); Dwelling Places: Poems and Translations (1993); Gilgamesh: A New Rendering in English Verse (1992); Strangers: A Book of Poems (1983); On the Way to the Island (1960); and The Limits of Mortality: An Essay on Wordsworth's Major Poems (1959). A new collection, Bewilderment, is due out next year.

Of No Country I Know: New and Selected Poems and Translations won the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, the Bingham Poetry Prize from Boston Book Review, the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry and was a finalist for The New Yorker Book Award and the L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award. This year he won the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize for Lifetime Achievement.

Ferry's other awards include the Sixtieth Fellowship of The Academy of American Poets, the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award, the Teasdale Prize for Poetry, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, the Ingram Merrill Award, and the William Arrowsmith Translation Prize from AGNI magazine. In 1998 he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

He is the Sophie Chantal Hart Professor Emeritus of English at Wellesley College and a Visiting Lecturer in Creative Writing at Boston University. He lives in Cambridge.

Oct 16, 2011 • John Hodgen

John Hodgen lives in Shrewsbury, MA. He is Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Assumption College, and also teaches at Mount Wachusett Community College and the Worcester Art Museum. He is the author of Heaven & Earth Holding Company, (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010), Grace, (winner of the 2005 AWP Donald Hall Prize in Poetry, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006), In My Father's House (winner of the 1993 Bluestem Award from Emporia State University in Kansas), and Bread Without Sorrow (2001, winner of the 2002 Balcones Poetry Prize, Lynx House Press /Eastern Washington University Press, Spokane WA).

He has won the Grolier Prize for Poetry, an Arvon Foundation Award, the Yankee Magazine Award for Poetry, first prize in the Red Brick Review poetry competition, a Massachusetts Cultural Council Finalist Award in Poetry in 2000. He won the Chad Walsh Poetry Prize for the best poems published in Beloit Poetry Journal in 2008. Several of his poems have been nominated for The Pushcart Prize, and he was one of five finalists in the Massachusetts Artists Foundation Fellowship Program. He was a finalist in Houghton Mifflin's New Poetry Series, Cleveland State University's Poetry Center Prize, Carnegie Mellon University's Poetry Series, and Northeastern University's Samuel French Morse Poetry Award. John's work has been included in the anthologies Witness and Wait: Thirteen Poets From New England and Something Understood (Every Other Thursday Press, Cambridge, MA, 1989, 1996); We Teach Them All: Teachers Writing About Diversity (Stenhouse Publishers, York, Maine, 1996); and Bone Cages (Haley Press, Athol, MA, 1996).

Nov 20, 2011 • Andrew Sofer

Andrew Sofer is the author of Wave (Main Street Rag’s Editor’s Select Poetry Series), which was named a finalist for the Morse Prize and seven other national contests. His awards include Southwest Review’s Morton Marr Prize; Atlanta Review’s International Publication Award; First Prize in the Iambs & Trochees Contest; The Lyric’s Margaret Haley Carpenter Prize; and New England Poetry Club’s Gretchen Warren Award, Boyle/Farber Prize, and Erika Mumford Prize. He teaches drama and creative writing at Boston College.

Dec 18, 2011 • Holiday Reading: Favorite Poem Day

Bring in your favorite poem (yours or someone else's) to read in an extended open mike, and join us for food, drink, and holiday merriment.

Jan 15, 2012 • Dennis Hinrichsen

Dennis Hinrichsen’s most recent book is Rip Tooth, winner of the 2011 Tampa Review Prize for Poetry. His previous books include Kurosawa’s Dog (2008 FIELD Poetry Prize), Cage of Water (University of Akron Press, 2004), Detail from ‘The Garden of Earthly Delights’ (1999 Akron Poetry Prize), The Rain That Falls This Far (Galileo Press, 1991), and The Attraction of Heavenly Bodies (Wesleyan New Poets, 1983). He is also winner of a National Endowment for the Arts grant, two grants from the State of Michigan, and awards from Poetry Northwest and Carolina Quarterly. He currently teaches at Lansing Community College.

Feb 19, 2012 • R. Dwayne Betts

Reginald Dwayne Betts is a husband and father of a young son. As a poet, essayist and national spokesperson for the Campaign for Youth Justice, Betts writes and lectures about the impact of mass incarceration on American society. In 2011 Betts was awarded a Radcliffe Fellowship to Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Studies. The author of the memoir, A Question of Freedom (Avery/Penguin 2009) and the collection of poetry, Shahid Reads His Own Palm (Alice James Books, 2010), Betts’ work possesses a careful, complicated and often difficult-to-confront intimacy that challenges conventional ideas about crime, masculinity and redemption. In 2010 he was awarded an NAACP Image Award for A Question of Freedom, and a Soros Justice Fellowship to complete The Circumference of a Prison, a work of nonfiction exploring the criminal justice system's role in the every day lives of Americans who have not committed crimes.

Mar 18, 2012 • Leslie Williams

Leslie Williams is the author of the poetry collection Success of the Seed Plants, which won the 2010 Bellday Books Prize. She is also the recipient of the Poetry Society of America’s Robert H. Winner Award, fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the Illinois Arts Council, and awards from the Ragdale Foundation. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, Slate, The Southern Review, Shenandoah and in many other magazines. A North Carolina native, she now lives near Boston with her husband and two sons.

Apr 15, 2012 • Aimee Sands

Aimée Sands is a poet and independent documentary filmmaker. Her first book of poems The Green-go Turn of Telling, is forthcoming this year from Salmon Poetry in Ireland. Her poems have appeared in FIELD, Beloit Poetry Journal, Poet Lore, Measure, Salamander and other literary journals. She is the co-director of the Brookline Poetry Series.

Her documentary short What Makes Me White? is currently in use as a tool for diversity and anti-racism work in over 200 colleges, churches, and nonprofits in the US and Canada. The film has also screened at a number of academic conferences. The project was recently awarded a $200,000 grant by the Kellogg Foundation, and Aimée is now expanding the film to an hour.

In her 20 plus years as a radio and television producer, Aimée has received 18 awards for her work, including an Emmy, a Peabody Award, and a San Francisco Film Festival Golden Gate Award. Her television credits include Africans in America, the landmark PBS series on America’s journey through slavery; We Are Family, a WGBH and PBS documentary on life in lesbian and gay families; and Two Intimate Journeys, a WGBH documentary contrasting a feminist and a New Right woman. She has produced in-depth news and documentaries for both WGBH-TV and Radio, as well as for NPR’s All Things Considered and Morning Edition.

Aimée is a past recipient of a National Press Foundation Spanish Language Fellowship, which enabled her to attain Spanish fluency in Mexico. She has an MFA from Bennington College and has taught at Clark University. She is currently an adjunct lecturer at Babson College.

May 20, 2012 • Kevin Goodan

Kevin Goodan’s most recent book is Winter Tenor (Alice James Books, 2009). His first book, In the Ghost-House Acquainted, won a New England/New York Award from Alice James Books, as well as the 2005 L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award. His poems have been published in Ploughshares, Colorado Review, Crazyhorse, Mid-American Poetry Review, American Poet Magazine, Cutbank, and other journals.

Raised on the Flathead Indian Reservation in Western Montana, Goodan began working for the U.S. Forest Service at a young age. He has lived in Northern Ireland and western Massachusetts. He received his M.F.A. degree from the MFA Program for Poets & Writers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and his B.A. degree from the University of Montana. He has taught at the University of Connecticut and as Visiting Writer at Wesleyan University. He currently resides in Idaho and teaches at the Lewis-Clark State College.

History of the Brookline Poetry Series

The Brookline Poetry Series was founded in the spring and summer of 2001 by our friend and fellow poet Diane Collins Ouellette. Diane died of cancer several months into the series, and, with her husband Berred's support, we continued. We are guided by her original mission: a quality venue for local poets, both published and yet-to-be published; a place for a multiplicity of poetic voices; a series particularly dedicated to featuring the work of Brookline poets.

In the years since, we have featured the best contemporary voices in American poetry, as well as many fine local poets.

We are dedicated to providing a forum for poets of all experience to listen and read their work. In 2005, the Boston Globe named us the Best in Boston for our open mike.

We welcome all Boston-area poets to our series.

Since March 2008, the series has been held at the Public Library of Brookline.

Ann Killough
Susana Roberts
Aimee Sands