Thirteen talented New England poets will gather in Café II at Asnuntuck Community College on Tuesday, October 16, 2012, at 7:00 PM, to read their poetry in the tenth annual Freshwater Poets Coffee House. The poets are all featured in the 2012 issue of Asnuntuck’s internationally known poetry journal, Freshwater, now in its fourteenth year. The journal is put together by student editors working in a poetry magazine production class with Edwina Trentham, Professor Emeritus of English. The editors read two thousand poems, submitted by poets throughout the United States and the world, to select seventy poems to be published in Freshwater. Each issue also includes poems by annual winners of the Asnuntuck Student Poetry Contest, open to the Connecticut Community colleges, Connecticut Public Universities, and selected Connecticut local high schools. This year’s contest was judged by Connecticut Poet Laureate Dick Allen.
This year’s readers are from many different backgrounds, and the work they will read is rich and varied. Maria Luisa Arroyo, a Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow in Poetry, facilitates poetry workshops, has poetry in many literary journals, and has also had a collection of her work, Gathering Words: Recogiendo Palabras, published by The Bilingual Review Press, Arizona State University. Nancy Goodrich is a student at Manchester Community College who won First Prize in the Twentieth Annual Asnuntuck Student Poetry Contest. Janet Greenberg, an adjunct professor of Literature and Composition, was awarded the Susan Saniel Elkiind Prize for poetry and has published work in Kalliope: A Journal of Women’s Literature and Art. Joan Hofmann is a Professor of Education at the University of St. Joseph, and her work has been published in a WordArt 2009, WordArt 2011, and the Grayson Press anthology Where Flowers Bloom. Groton resident Betsy Kudlacz is a scientist and poet who has published work in a variety of journals, including Cicada, Aurorean, Connecticut River Review, Caduceus, and Bellowing Ark. Rachel Larensen, a student at Asnuntuck and a professional chef, won Second Honorable Mention in the Twentieth Annual Asnuntuck Student Poetry Contest. Pat O’Brien is an award winning poet from Old Saybrook, whose collection of poetry, When Less Than Perfect Is Enough, was recently published by Antrim House. Lana Orphanides, from Groton, a painter who is also a widely published poet, has exhibited and done many readings throughout Connecticut, including at the Mystic Arts Café and the Hygienic Gallery in New London. Steve Parlato, from Waterbury, is an Assistant Professor of English at Naugatuck Valley Community College, who has won many prizes and has read his work extensively. His young adult novel, The Namesake, which won a 2011 Tassy Walden Award for New Voices, debuts January 18, 2013, from Merit Press, a new Imprint of F+W/Adams Media. Brie Quartin won Third Honorable Mention in the Twentieth Annual Asnuntuck Student Poetry Contest. John Stanizzi, an adjunct professor of English at Manchester Community College teaches English at Bacon Academy in Colchester. Antrim House has published two of his books Ecstasy Among Ghosts and Sleepwalking. Suffield resident Allison Zaczynski won First Honorable Mention in Asnuntuck’s Twentieth Annual Student Poetry Contest and was the winner of the 2011 Asnuntuck Excellence in Poetry Award. Jonas Zdanys, a bilingual poet and translator, is the author of thirty-nine books, thirty-six of them collections of poetry written in English and Lithuanian, and he has won many awards for his work. Refreshments will be served, and the reading is free and open to the public. Copies of books by many of the featured poets, as well as copies of Freshwater 2012, will be on sale. An open poetry mic will be part of the reading. For more information contact Edwina Trentham at 860-253-3105 or etrentham@acc.commnet.edu.