Join us for an evening of poetry and music as we honor the winners of the 2015 String Poet Prize, and the fifth anniversary of String Poet!
Featuring a reading by 2015 Finalist Judge Bruce Guernsey and culminating in the reading of prize-winner John Beaton’s poem followed by the premiere performance of Joelle Wallach’s composition, this is a must-see event for anyone able to attend!
In honor of reaching the 5 year mark, these excellent poets from past issues will read their String Poet pearls: Daniel Brown, Gladys Henderson, Robert Schechter, Pramila Venkateswaran, Herb Wahlsteen and Muriel Harris Weinstein.
John Beaton is a retired actuary who was raised in the Highlands of Scotland and lives on Vancouver Island, Canada. He was moderator of The Deep End workshop at Eratosphere for several years. His poetry has appeared widely online and in publications as diverse as Able Muse and Gray’s Sporting Journal. He is a regular spoken word performer, both solo and with the band Celtic Chaos.
Bruce Guernsey is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Eastern Illinois University where he taught creative writing and American Literature for twenty-five years. He has also taught at William and Mary, Johns Hopkins, the University of New Hampshire, and Virginia Wesleyan College where he was the poet in residence for four years. A graduate with honors from Colgate University, he holds M.A.’s from the University of Virginia and Johns Hopkins and a PhD from New Hampshire, writing his dissertation on tools as metaphor in Robert Frost’s poetry.
Joelle Wallach writes music for orchestra, chamber ensembles, solo voices and choruses. Her String Quartet 1995 was the American Composers Alliance nominee for the 1997 Pulitzer Prize in Music. The New York Philharmonic Ensembles premiered her octet, From the Forest of Chimneys, written to celebrate their 10th anniversary; and the New York Choral Society commissioned her secular oratorio, Toward a Time of Renewal, for 200 voices and orchestra to commemorate their 35th Anniversary Season in Carnegie Hall.
Daniel Brown’s poems have appeared in Poetry, Partisan Review, PN Review, Parnassus, The New Criterion and other journals, as well as a number of anthologies including Poetry 180 (ed. Billy Collins) and The Swallow Anthology of New American Poets (ed. David Yezzi). His work has been awarded a Pushcart prize, and his collection Taking the Occasion won the New Criterion Poetry Prize. His new collection is What More?
Gladys Henderson has received many prizes for her poetry, and she is widely published. In 2015 she was selected featured poet in Oberon. Her chapbook, Eclipse Of Heaven, was published by Finishing Line Press, (June 2008).
Robert Schechter has published poems and translations in Highlights for Children, First Things, The Washington Post, The Evansville Review, Poetry East, The Alabama Literary Review, The Raintown Review, Per Contra, Light Quarterly, LightenUp Online, Snakeskin, and Bumbershoot, among other journals.
Pramila Venkateswaran is the author of Thirtha (Yuganta Press, 2002), Behind Dark Waters (Plain View Press, 2008), and Draw Me Inmost (Stockport Flats, 2009). An award-winning poet, she has performed her poems internationally, most recently in the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival. Her essays and reviews have appeared in Women’s Studies Quarterly, Journal of Postcolonial Writing, and Socialism and Democracy. She is an Associate Professor of English at Nassau Community College. She plays the violin and sings Indian classical music.
Herb Wahlsteen earned a B.A. in English from CA St. U., Fullerton, and an M.A. in English from Columbia U. He earned a permanent NY State license to teach English, grades 7-12, and taught in the NYC Public School System. He was a finalist in the Yale Series of Younger Poets contest, placed 3rd in the Writer’s Digest 77th Annual Writing Competition: Rhyming Category, and has had poems published in: Long Island Quarterly, the Great South Bay magazine, The Lyric magazine, Paumanok Interwoven, and Suffolk County Poetry Review.
Muriel Harris Weinstein’s poems have appeared in many literary magazines: The Comstock Review, The Cortland Review, Kent State Review, The Cape Rock, Nassau Review, and in several anthologies. Poetry is her first love, but she also writes children’s literature, including her first, When Louis Armstrong Taught Me Scat, a Junior Library Guild Selection, and Play Louis, Play!, a middle-grade bio of the great Louis Armstrong, also a Junior Library Guild Selection, winner of the Paterson Prize at P.C.C.C., and nominated for the Texas Bluebonnet Award.