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
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
Joshua Coben’s second collection, Night Chaser (David Robert Books, 2020), was a finalist for the Vassar Miller Prize, the New American Poetry Prize, and the Donald Justice Poetry Prize. His first book, Maker of Shadows (Texas Review Press, 2010), won the X. J. Kennedy Poetry Prize. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Atlanta Review, The Cincinnati Review, College English, Pleiades, Poet Lore, Poetry Daily, Salamander, and elsewhere. A St. Louis native, he is an elementary school teacher and librarian. He and his family live in Dedham. Visit him online at joshuacoben.com. His books can be purchased from Bookshop.org at the following links: Night Chaser, Maker of Shadows.
Steven Cramer’s sixth poetry collection is Listen (MadHat Press, 2020). His previous collections are The Eye That Desires to Look Upward, The World Book, Dialogue for the Left and Right Hand, Goodbye to the Orchard, and Clangings. Goodbye to the Orchard won the Sheila Motton Prize from the New England Poetry Club and was named an Honor Book in Poetry by the Massachusetts Center for the Book. Recipient of two grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, he founded and now teaches in the Low-Residency Program in Creative Writing at Lesley University. Porter Square Books (https://www.portersquarebooks.com/product/listen-steven-cramer) has been selling Listen.
Petition is Joyce Peseroff’s sixth book of poems. She is the editor of Robert Bly: When Sleepers Awake, The Ploughshares Poetry Reader, and Simply Lasting: Writers on Jane Kenyon. Her fifth collection, Know Thyself, was designated a “must read” by the 2016 Massachusetts Book Award. Recent poems and reviews appear in Consequence, On the Seawall, Massachusetts Review, and Plume. She directed and taught in UMass Boston’s MFA Program in its first four years. Currently she blogs for her website So I Gave You Quartz at joycepeseroff.com and writes the poetry column for Arrowsmith Press. To order Petition, go to: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/P/bo68082264.html
January 8: Poetry in Spanish and Translations
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, 2021
Readers to be announced
March 12, 2021
Readers to be announced
April 9, 2021
Readers to be announced
May 14, 2021
Readers to be announced
*Member Jamaica Pond Poets