Edna St. Vincent Millay on Saturday, April 18 

Bright Hill Literary Center, 94 Church St. Treadwell, NY 13846  - Free  Contact 607-829-5055 or [email protected] 

On Saturday, April 18, Bright Hill will present the third Great American Poets Day Celebration, honoring the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, who was born on February 22, 1892 and died October 19, 1950. 

     Millay was one of the most popular writers of her time, a major poet in 20th-century American literature. She was born in Rockland, ME amd began writing when quite young; her poem "Renascence" was published when she was 19 years old, and she would publish poetry plays, a libretto, and political works over the next 30 years. She traveled the country, reading her work and reciting poetry on the radio to support the War Effort. She received the Pulitzer Prize in 1923. After the War, she was an important voice in New York City's Greenwich Village.

     The celebration will take place from noon - 5 pm at Bright Hill Literary Center, 94 Church St., Treadwell, NY 13846 (one block north of Co. Rte 14). The afternoon will begin at noon with a sonnet-writing workshop led by NYC & Maryland,  NY poet George Held, followed by readings, discussions, and open mic from - 5 pm. The event is free and open to the public, and refreshments will be served. Those attending are welcome to bring extra copies of poems to share for National Poetry Month's "Poem in Your Pocket" Day later in the month. 

     Held will be joined by regional poets Evelyn Augusto, Jefferson; Mary Mafoske, Warwick; Gretchen Primack, Woodstock; and Bertha Rogers, Treadwell.  They will discuss Millay's poetry and read from her poems as well as their own. More than 400 of Bertha Rogers's poems have been published in literary magazines, journals, and anthologies, and in several collections, among them Sleeper, You Wake (Mellen Poetry Press); A House of Corners (Three Conditions Press), The Fourth Beast (Snark Press);  and Heart Turned Back (Salmon Poetry, Ireland); and the forthcoming Wild (Salmon Poetry, Ireland). Her translation of the Anglo-Saxon epic, Beowulf, was published in 2000 (Birch Brook Press); her translation of the Anglo-Saxon riddle poems from the Exeter Book, Uncommon Creatures, Singing Things, is forthcoming from Birch Brook Press. In 2007 she received the Association of Teaching Artists Distinguished Service to the Arts in Education Field Award; she has also received fellowships and awards from the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation, New York Foundation for the Arts; New York State Council on the Arts; and the AE Ventures Foundation. She is the founding director, since 1992, of Bright Hill Press and Literary Center in New York's Catskill Mountain Region.
      Born in White Plains, George Held has lived most of his life in New York State and City, and shares with his wife, who hails from Buffalo, a small summer house east of Oneonta. His degrees are from Brown, University of Hawai'i, and Rutgers, and he taught literature and creative writing at Queens College for 37 years. He regularly publishes poetry, fiction, and book reviews, in such places as Circumference, Confrontation, Notre Dame Review, and String Poet. His work has been included in three dozen anthologies, including Obsession: Sestinas in the Twenty-first Century (2014) and Rabbit Ears: Poets on TV (2015). He has received 8 Pushcart Prize nominations, and Garrison Keillor read one of Held's poems on A Writer's Almanac. Among his 20 poetry collections are Neighbors 3: The Water Critters (2015), animal poems for children, illustrated by Joung Un Kim. His books also include After Shakespeare: New & Selected Sonnets (2011) and Culling: New & Selected Nature Poems (2014), which Kirkus Reviews calls "strong, ... a closely observed collection on nature and environmentalism." A longtime member of the executive board of the South Fork Natural History Museum (Bridgehampton, NY), Held lives in Greenwich Village with his wife, Cheryl.
      Evelyn Augusto, Jefferson, NY, writes a blog For Catholics who care (www.letitallstarthere.com) and facilitates a poetry workshop at The Stamford, NY Library. She has been a member of the Adult Advanced Poetry Workshop at Bright Hill since its inception, and she believes that her involvement with the workshop has been life changing. Evelyn has a daughter, Julia.
     Mary Makofske, Warwick, NY's latest book Traction won the Richard Snyder Prize (Ashland Poetry Press, 2011). Her other books are The Disappearance of Gargoyles and Eating Nasturtiums, winner of a Flume Press Chapbook Competition. Her work has appeared in many journals including Poetry, Mississippi Review, Poetry East, Calyx, Natural Bridge, Zone 3, Paterson Literary Review, and in 11 anthologies. Individual poems received the Robert Penn Warren Prize, the Iowa Woman Prize, the Lullwater Review Prize, the Spoon River Poetry Review Prize, The Ledge Prize, third in the William Matthews Prize, Honorable Mention in the Oberon Prize, and three Honorable Mentions in the Allen Ginsberg Awards. She was born and grew up in Washington, DC, and worked as a travel agent, reporter, and health educator before becoming a professor of English at SUNY Orange, from which she retired in 2006. A mother of two sons and two grandsons, she lives with her husband in a solar house with a large garden.
     Gretchen Primack is the author of two poetry collections, Kind (Post-Traumatic Press 2013) and Doris' Red Spaces (Mayapple Press 2014). Her poems have appeared in The Paris Review, Prairie Schooner, The Massachusetts Review, FIELD, Antioch Review, Ploughshares, Best New Poets, and other journals. Primack coordinates Ulster Literacy Association's jail program and works at an indie bookstore in Woodstock, NY. Also an advocate for non-human animals, she co-wrote The Lucky Ones: My Passionate Fight for Farm Animals (Penguin Avery 2012) with Jenny Brown.  She lives in Hurley, NY with her beloved dogs, cats, and human.  Her website is www.gretchenprimack.com.
     More than 500 of Bertha Rogers's poems have been published in literary magazines, journals, and anthologies, and in several collections, among them Sleeper, You Wake (Mellen Poetry Press); A House of Corners (Three Conditions Press), The Fourth Beast (Snark Press);  and Heart Turned Back (Salmon Poetry, Ireland); and the forthcoming Wild (Salmon Poetry, Ireland). Her translation of the Anglo-Saxon epic, Beowulf, was published in 2000 (Birch Brook Press); her translation of the Anglo-Saxon riddle poems from the Exeter Book, Uncommon Creatures, Singing Things, is forthcoming. In 2007 she received the Association of Teaching Artists Distinguished Service to the Arts in Education Field Award; she has also received fellowships and awards from the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation, New York Foundation for the Arts; New York State Council on the Arts; and the AE Ventures Foundation. She is the founding director, since 1992, of Bright Hill Press and Literary Center in New York's Catskill Mountain Region.    
     Bright Hill's 2015, 23rd-year programs are made possible by grants from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature; Otis A. Thomson; A. Lindsay and Olive B. O'Connor; A. C. Molinari; Dewar, and Tianaderrah Foundations; Stewart's Shops; the Abraham Kellogg Education Fund, Delaware County Office of Economic Development, Delaware Youth Bureau, through the auspices of the New York State Office of Children and Family Services; Delaware National Bank of Delhi, and with the support of Bright Hill's members and friends. New York Artist Equity Association has contributed art for fund-raising for the past several years.