Chapter and Verse

Chapter and Verse is a free literary reading series sponsored by the Jamaica Pond Poets, usually on the second Friday of the month, from October through May. The events take place at the Loring Greenough House in Jamaica Plain at 7:30 PM (for map and directions, see below). The operating committee members are  Dorothy Derifield, Sandra Storey, Susanna Kittridge, Jennifer Markell, and Alan Smith Soto

There are three readers followed by free refreshments. Open to all. Please join us. A $5.00 donation is requested but not required.For more information, contact dorothy.derifield@gmail.com

Biographies of Our Next Readers 

May 10, 2019,   Friday, at 7:30 PM

Special Event – 25th Anniversary of Chapter and Verse reading by members of the Jamaica Pond Poets

Mary Birnbaum was born, raised, and educated in New York City. She has studied poetry with Fred Marchant, Martha Collins, Yusef Komunyakaa and Danielle Legros Georges. She has participated in poetry readings in New England and had a poem published in Massachusetts Review.

Dorothy Derifield’s collection, Zero Plus Time, will be published in 2020. She is the director of the long-running literary series Chapter and Verse. Her work received an editor’s award from Plainsongs. She is the author of the chapbook The River and the Lakes.

Carolyn Gregory has authored two poetry collections, Open Letters and Facing The Music. Her poems and music essays have been published in American Poetry Review, Main Street Rag, Off the Coast, Cutthroat, Bellowing Ark, Seattle Review, Tower Journal, and Stylus. She previously won a Massachusetts Cultural Council award.

Holly Guran is the creator of two full-length collections, Twilight Chorus and River of Bones, and the chapbooks River Tracks and Mothers’ Trails. She was a recipient of a 2012 Massachusetts Cultural Council finalist award. Her work has appeared in journals including Slipstream, Poet Lore, Poetry East, Hawai’i Pacific Review, and Salamander.

Audrey Henderson, originally from Scotland, was a 2014 Hawthornden Fellow and a finalist for the 2014 Homebound Publications Poetry Prize for her collection, Airstream, published by Homebound that year. She was a finalist in the Indiana Review 1/2 K Award and won second place in the River Styx International Poetry Contest.

Susanna Kittredge’s collection, The Future Has a Reputation, will be published in 2020. She received a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry from San Francisco State University. Her poems have been published in many print and on-line literary journals including Salamander, Bang Out, 580 Split, Instant City, Parthenon West Review, and 14 Hills.

Dorian Kotsiopoulos has featured at various poetry reading venues. Her work has appeared in literary and medical journals, including Poet Lore, Salamander, Slipstream, New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, Women’s Review of Books, and Main Street Rag.

Poet, photographer, and generalist Jim LaFond-Lewis was born seventh in a family of nine siblings. He spent the first 30 years of his working life as a restauranteur, and subsequently, after a brief foray into journalism, earns his living as a candy manufacturer. The Year There Were No Apples is his first published volume.

Jennifer Markell’s poetry collection, Samsara, was published in 2014. Samsara was named a “Must Read Book of Poetry” for 2015 by the Massachusetts Book Awards. Her work has appeared in Consequence, The Hawaii Pacific Review, Rhino, and The Women’s Review of Books.

Alan Smith Soto was born in San José, Costa Rica, and lived in Madrid for many years. He has published two books of poems, Fragmentos de alcancía (Treasure Jar Fragments) and Libro del lago (Pond poems) and read his poetry in various cities on several continents. He is professor of Spanish literature at Boston University.

Sandra Storey is the author of the collection Every State Has Its Own Light, a finalist for the May Swenson Poetry Award. She leads community workshops where a different poetic idea, sometimes suggested the week before by people in the workshop, is the focus each session.

Gary Whited’s manuscript, Having Listened, winner of the Homebound Publications 2013 Poetry Contest, was published by Homebound that year. He is a poet, philosopher and psychotherapist who grew up on the plains of eastern Montana.