Chapter and Verse
Chapter and Verse is a literary reading series sponsored by Jamaica Pond Poets, usually on the second Friday of the month, from October through May at 7:30 pm. The readings took place at the historic Loring Greenough House in Jamaica Plain for more than 20 years, through February 2020. Beginning October 16, 2020 and for the foreseeable future, the readings will be on Zoom. Chapter and Verse committee members are: Dorothy Derifield (Director), Sandra Storey (Codirector), Mary Birnbaum, Susanna Kittredge, Jennifer Markell, and Alan Smith Soto. For more information, contact dorothy.derifield.@gmail.com.
Chapter and Verse usually features three readers per event. Please join us. To be on our email list for readings, email sandeestorey@fastmail.fm with your name and email address. To receive a Zoom invitation with a link on the day of the reading, RSVP to sandeestorey@fastmail.fm stating that you want to attend.
Readings: Fall 2020 – Spring 2021
October 16: Mary Buchinger, *Valerie Loveland, and *Jennifer Markell; MC: *Alan Smith Soto
November 13: Allison Adair, Robbie Gamble, *Susanna Kittredge; MC: *Jennifer Markell
December 11: Joshua Coben, Steven Cramer, Joyce Peseroff; MC: *Sandra Storey
January 8: Poetry in Spanish and Translations into English and into Music
Poet: Pedro Granados Translator: Leslie Bary
Poet: Daisy Novoa Vásquez Translator: *Alan Smith Soto
Poet: Juana Borrero Translator/Composer: Stephany Svorinić
MC: *Alan Smith Soto
February 12: Susan Buttenwieser, Jennifer Martelli, Scott Withiam; MC: *Dorothy Derifield
March 12: Sally Bliumis-Dunn, Robert Carr, and Jennifer De Leon; MC: *David Miller
April 9: Clare Beams, Greg LeStage, and David McCann; MC: *Mary Birnbaum
Clare Beams’s novel The Illness Lesson, published in February, 2020 by Doubleday, was named a New York Times Editors’ Choice, a best book of 2020 by Esquire and Bustle, and was long-listed for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. Her story collection, We Show What We Have Learned, was published by Lookout Books in 2016; it won the Bard Fiction Prize and was a Kirkus Best Debut of 2016. A new novel, The Garden, will be published by Doubleday in 2023. She lives in Pittsburgh with her husband and two daughters. The book can be ordered from https://bookshop.org/books/the-illness-lesson/9780525565475
Gregory LeStage lives in Jamaica Plain with this three daughters and Great Pyrenees puppy, Winifred. He is a former academic who left university life many years ago for the challenges of the business world. He is now a senior executive in a global management consulting firm. His passions include tinkering with his antique vehicles and 1830s farmhouse and barn on Cape Cod. He received his PhD and MA from Oxford University and his BA from Trinity College. His poetry collection Small Gods of Summer was a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Prize, and Hope Is a Small Barn was the runner-up for the Julia Ward Howe Prize. He is currently working on his next collection. His books are available on Amazon or from the poet himself via gregglestage@yahoo.com.
David McCann served in the first Peace Corps group in Korea, 1966-68, taught Classical Japanese language and literature at Cornell, then Korean literature at Cornell and at Harvard. During graduate studies at Harvard he took creative writing classes with Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Fitzgerald, Robert Shaw, and Jane Shore. David has published 21 books of and about Korean poetry and cultural history, and ten books of his own poems. He received Pushcart Prize publication in 1978 and Touchstone Award in 2014. A dual-language edition of his sijo poems, Urban Temple, Bo-Leaf Books 2010, was published by Changbi Publishers, Seoul, in 2012. His three recent collections, Same Bird, Lost & Found, and Out of Words, are available from publisher Moon Pie Press. http://www.moonpiepress.com/catalog.php?BookID=16.
May 14: Jane Brox, Jeffrey Harrison, and Jennifer LeBlanc; MC: *Susanna Kittredge
*Member Jamaica Pond Poets