I will be reading some poems from Inheritance Of Aging Self at Kensington Day Of The Book on April 23rd during the 11 am hour as part of the poetry program. The festival runs from 11-4 along Howard Ave. in Old Town Kensington, MD. Hope to see you there and many thanks to Nancy Naomi Carlson as well as Kurt Olsson for all their work in organizing the poetry program, what a great lineup of poets!
I’m looking forward to sharing some poems from Inheritance Of Aging Self as well as some newer work at the September 1rst Diverse Gaithersburg Poetry Reading at the Casey Center (810 S Frederick Ave, Gaithersburg, MD 20877) at 7 pm. CL will be the other featured reader and there is an open mic as well. Great thanks to Kristin Kowalski Ferragut for inviting me to read! I’ll have copies of my book with me if you would like to buy a copy, autograph and quilted bookmark included!
The schedule for the Gaithersburg Book Festival is now online and you can find both the adult and children’s schedules here! I will be talking about Inheritance Of Aging Self at 11:15 at the Edgar Allen Poe Tent on a panel with Jay Hall Carpenter and Lisa Tice, moderated by Shaquetta Nelson and I’ll be signing books (available for purchase at the book festival) right after the panel concludes. This is an amazing book festival with something for people of all ages and interests and this year there is a full day of poetry panels for the first time! The festival is at Bohrer Park in Gaithersburg, MD.
After four wonderful years of hosting poetry readings in Gaithersburg, I’ve decided it is time to step down in order to pursue other interests. I’m delighted that my good friend, the phenomenal poet Kristin Kowalski Ferragut will be taking over the reins of the DiVerse Gaithersburg Poetry Reading. Read on for more details, cross-posted from the DiVerse website:
Dear Poets and Community Friends,
I’ll give you the punchline first—the DiVerse Gaithersburg Poetry Reading is planning to re-start this winter on a new day and with a new host! Got your attention? Read on…
When the pandemic hit almost two years ago, never in my worst imaginings did I think that the DiVerse Gaithersburg poetry reading would be on pause for this long. As I write this, the Montgomery County libraries are still not open on Sundays and the meeting room at the Quince Orchard Library has not re-opened for use either. It is unclear whether the libraries will start operating on Sundays again, so with the help of Eve Burton, the librarian that we work with at Quince Orchard Library, we are moving the reading to 2nd Saturday afternoons beginning in January, exact time to be determined and information about any restrictions nearer to the date. I am grateful to Eve for all her work to make it possible for us to meet at the library.
And now for the really big news:
Like many people, I had plenty of time when things were shutdown to do some thinking about the work that I do and what I want moving forward. One of the things I realized is that after 50 plus years of organizing and community building of various kinds, I really want to be doing other things with my time. Which led me to start thinking about finding someone to take over hosting DiVerse. After some thought and talking it over with a few people (and thank you to those of you who helped me think it through!), I realized the choice was obvious and luckily the timing was right for her as well. I am thrilled to announce that my good friend and amazing poet Kristin Kowalski Ferragut will be taking over as the host of the DiVerse Gaithersburg poetry reading!
Over the next few months Kristin and I will be making that transition happen. She will be starting to look at programming for the spring and will start sharing that info when she is ready. We will be posting again on the website and facebook page, so keep an eye out for that.
I will remain as a resource person as needed until things are up and running and will no doubt be at many readings happily sitting in the audience.
Since I started organizing poetry readings in Gaithersburg, some 50 poets from a multitude of backgrounds have come to share their work with us, plus countless more at the open mics that followed, including some bravely reading for the first time. While always a work in progress, the diversity of our programming is something that I am proud of.
Since the reading began four years ago, DiVerse has become both a community and a community resource. Regular attendees have gotten to know each other, work on our craft together and become friends. And because we meet at the library, we often attract folks from the community who perhaps have never been to a reading before.
I know that Kristin shares my vision of how important these things are and will bring her own wonderful talent and ideas to continuing the readings. So please join me in welcoming her to this new role and for goodness sake, help her to get the chairs set up (if you’ve been to a DiVerse reading, you know what I mean)!
With gratitude to all of you for making the DiVerse Gaithersburg Poetry Reading a success!
–Lucinda Marshall
I will be reading along with Miles David Moore and Ann Bracken at the July 21rst Poets vs The Pandemic reading sponsored by Cafe Muse. The reading begins at 7 pm and will last for an hour. I’ll be sharing several poems from Inheritance Of Aging Self as well as a pandemic poem or 2 and some new work.
The readers were chosen based on all of us being poetry reading organizers, Ann is one of the organizers of the Wilde Readings in Columbia, MD and Miles was the force behind the long-running Iota readings in Arlington, VA, and I founded the DiVerse Gaithersburg (MD) reading. As I’m sure they will both agree, it is always fun to be the reader and not the organizer every now and again. Many thanks to Henry Crawford for all the work he has done to organize this series. Read more about MIles and Ann here.
The reading will be on zoom and you can register here for the link. It will also be available later on You Tube because as Henry pointed out in an email, one of the purposes of the series is to “document DC area poetry during the pandemic.” As a huge fan of documenting things, I’m so glad that they are doing this because our poetic voices during the pandemic are an important part of helping us to make sense of what we’ve all been through.
Come join us for a wonderful evening of poetry!
Lucinda Marshall, photo by Jaree Donnelly