A WALK IN THE WORDS

​Words and wit will sprout as guests enjoy nature-inspired literary activities when they take "A Walk in the Words,” at Bedrock Gardens in Lee. Over two days in September, visitors can explore the Word Garden, participate in the Shape Poetry Slam (learn about them here), express their impressions through Haiku, build Once-Upon-a-Time Stories, take part in "What a Garden Means to Me,” or enjoy a nature poem read by the "Poets in the Garden."

Schedule

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Saturday, September 17th
10:30 am:  •Kickoff with Rebecca Rule
12:00–2:00  •Dale's JazzLab music group
12:00–3:00  •Poetry Readings on the South Lawn
                            12 noon: Diane Freedman
                            2 pm:  David Ferry
2:00 pm •Poetry Slam at Spiral Garden
3-4:00  • Oyster River Cooperative School District musicians, guided by Dave Ervin, perform an original medley of tunes from musicals based on literature

Sunday, September 18th
12:30-3:00  •Poetry Readings  on South Lawn
                            12:30 pm: Gary Whited
2:00  •Poetry Slam at Spiral Garden

Activities both days:
  • Haiku Board
  • Word Garden
  • Journalling notebooks
  • What a Garden Means to Me
  • Lee Library Tent

Participants

  • Rebecca Rule: Rebecca Rule gathers and tells stories. Her latest book (and first picture book for children) is The Iciest,Diciest, Scariest Sled Ride Ever, illustrated by Jennifer Thermes.  Other books include:  Moved and Seconded: NH Town Meeting, the Present, the Past, and the Future; The Best Revenge (named one of five essential New Hampshire books by New Hampshire Magazine); Could Have Been Worse: True Stories, Embellishments, and Outright Lies; Live Free and Eat Pie: A Storyteller’s Guide to NH; and  Headin’ for the Rhubarb: A New Hampshire Dictionary (well, kinda). She writes regularly UNH Magazine and hosts an interview show, the NH Authors Series, on NHPTV.  She sometimes performs a touring program called Crosscut, with photographs and stories on logging, the mills, and the community of Berlin. She recently received an honorary doctorate from New England College for storytelling and contributions to New Hampshire literature. Check her out here.
• Diane Freedman: Diane P. Freedman is the author of Midlife with Thoreau: Poems, Essays, Journals, a mixed-genre memoir (Hiraeth, 2015), and An Alchemy of Genres: Cross-Genre Writing by American Feminist Poet-Critics (Virginia). Her poems and essays have appeared in Fourth River,Wind, Ascent, Sou’wester, Permafrost, Roberson Poetry Annual, ISLE, Shorewords, University of Dayton Review, Bucknell Review, Women and Language, Crazyquilt, The Grapevine, Confessions of the Critics, Anxious Power: Reading, Writing, and Ambivalence in Narrative by Women, Constructing and Reconstructing Gender, Wildness: Voices of the Sacred Landscape, and other places. She is also an editor and co-editor. She is Professor of English and Core Faculty Member in Women’s Studies at the University of New Hampshire, where she teaches poetry, memoir, nature writing, women’s literature, and Holocaust literature.  An avid naturalist and gardener, she lives in the Durham woods in a house by a pond.
  • David Ferry:  David Ferry is an acclaimed American poet and translator. In addition to his lauded translations, which are noted for their fluency and grace, Ferry is a prize-winning poet in his own right. His poetic works include Dwelling Places (1993) and Of No Country I Know: New and Selected Poems and Translations (1999), which won the Lenore Marshall Prize, the Bingham Poetry Prize, the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry from the Library of Congress, and was a finalist for the L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award and the New Yorker Book Award. Bewilderment: New Poems and Translations (2012), won the National Book Award for Poetry. In addition to fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Academy of American Poets, in 1998 he was elected a fellow to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The Sophie Chantal Hart Professor Emeritus of English at Wellesley College, he is a visiting lecturer in creative writing at Boston University.  One biography of Ferry observes that "he understands that the more we attend, whether to language or the world, the more we discover we have missed.”  See his extensive bibliography here.
• Gary Whited: Gary Whited grew up on a ranch in eastern Montana, where his maternal and paternal grandparents had homesteaded in the early 1900’s. In college Gary eventually found his way into the study of philosophy with a special interest in the ancient Greek thinkers. After several years of teaching university philosophy, Gary is now a practicing psychotherapist, to which he was drawn because of its keen attention given to the art of listening. He realized that the activity of listening was a thread that ran through his entire life.  A strong sense of place pervades his poems, which have appeared in several journals, including Salamander, Plainsongs, The Aurorean, Atlanta Review, and Comstock Review. His book Having Listened was selected by the Independent Book Publishers Association for a Benjamin Franklin Book Award in May of 2014.  Learn more about him here.

We Want to Acknowledge and Thank the following Sponsor:

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New Hampshire Humanities connecting people to ​culture, history, places, ideas and one another, supporting over 500 free or low-cost public programs all over the state each year.

Here is the link to their calendar: http://www.nhhumanities.org/sites/default/files/101084_NHHC-Calendar%20Sep16-72_0.pdf
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