Tom McKone“Words Out Loud: Knowing by Heart” suggests several ways of looking at how experiences and memories affect us. The fall reading series at the Old West Church in Calais is part of Art at the Kent, the annual, monthlong exhibit at the Kent Museum. The theme of the readings is linked to this year’s Kent exhibit, “Holding: Mementos Kept, Memories Kindled.”
The series features six Vermont authors, with two reading each of three Sundays at 3 p.m. Gary Clark and Helen Whybrow read on Sept. 14, Diana Whitney and LN Bethea read on Sept. 21, and Harmony Belle Devoe and Carlene Kucharczyk read on Sept. 28.
Coordinator Mary Elder Jacobsen said readings by the five poets and one memoirist will include personal and family memories as well as writings about dementia. One or two of the poets may recite some of their work, another type of memory.
“We can know something by heart, like a poem you recite, but we go through life and have these various experiences, and we know something inside of ourselves because of something we’ve gone through,” Jacobsen said. “I have a path at my house that I can walk in the dark. There’s that kind of memory … the visceral, intuitive, organic, or physical memory we have.”
A feminist activist, Diana Whitney is editor of the award-winning anthology, “You Don’t Have To Be Everything: Poems for Girls Becoming Themselves,” and author of three poetry collections. LN Bethea, whom Jacobsen discovered while hearing her read at a memorial for poet Reuben Jackson, finds everything about the spoken word joyful.
Sixteen, and the youngest author ever to appear at Words Out Loud, Harmony Belle Devoe is the Inaugural Vermont Youth Poet Laureate, a Northeast Regional Poet Laureate runner-up, and chair of the Vermont State Youth Council. “Her multiracial heritage of Filipino, Indigenous Nipmuc, and European inspires her to address the injustices in our world, especially those brought upon marginalized communities and the Earth,” according to a press release.
Carlene Kucharczyk has been widely published in journals, and her debut book of poetry, “Strange Hymn,” won the Juniper Prize for a first book of poems. Jacobsen said Kucharczyk writes both poignant and humorous poems and recalls many literary figures in her work.
Jacobsen said the Old West Church has no heat, so attendees should dress in layers.
