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William Meredith Foundation 2019 Annual Poetry Awards - at the Embassy of Bulgaria, Washington DC September 14, 2019. Richard Harteis, host, President of WMF; Tihomir Stoytchev, Ambassador to US. Awards: Barbara Goldberg, The William Meredith Foundation Award for Translation; Tom Kirlin The Valentin Krustev Award for Poetry.
Letter from the President - May 2019

I am just back from several weeks in Bulgaria traveling with Barbara Goldberg, winner of this year’s Valentin Krustev Award in Translation. It was a wonderful trip which began with several days visiting Stoimen Stoilov in Varna on the Black Sea. Here is a ceramic wall he created recently for the university:




We moved on to Plovdiv for the Orpheus Festival and met wonderful poets from Israel, Denmark, Spain, North Macedonia, Rumania, and Serbia.





At times things got a bit political, though not much. Here is a small reflection sent to lovely Natasha.


For a Serbian Friend

Each of us
carries a target
on our back. 

When they hit you, 
Miloševic; me, Clinton.  

How sweet it would be 
To throw our jackets 
Into the fire, and run 
Like naked Children 
On a green field, 
In spring, hand in hand.

After Plovdiv, we drove to the American University in Blagoevgrad where a special event was produced for Barbara’s new book.



On the way to Sofia, we visited the Rila Monastery where part of William’s cremains were given to the wind several years ago.


Finally, we wound up in Sofia where the American Embassy held a fine reception for TRANSFORMATION, The award-winning book. I was particularly happy to meet Valentin’s mother for the first time and two of his sons. Honoring our dead colleague this way was the highlight of the trip for me.  A very special thank you to Fred Van Aken whose generosity largely made this travel possible. Here is a link to an account of the embassy reception which appeared in one of the largest Bulgarian papers, TRUD.

https://trud.bg/%D1%80%D0%B8%D1%87%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%B4-%D1%85%D0%B0%D1%80%D1%82%D0%B0%D0%B9%D1%81-%D0%BF%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%B4%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B0%D0%B2%D0%B8-%D0%B1%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%B1%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%B0-%D0%B3%D0%BE%D0%BB/


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onmszrapZoI&feature=share


Valentin Krustev’s mother and two of his sons.


Richard Harteis, President of the William Meredith Foundation



The William Meredith Foundation is about to begin a fund raising effort to celebrate the centennial anniversary of William Meredith's birth in 2019.
Bulgaria TV News coverage of scattering of William Meredith's ashes. September, 2016.
 
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LITERATURE
Previous Letter from the President, Richard Harteis

Dear Friends,

We continue to celebrate the “Year of William Meredith” with award ceremonies, exhibitions, and poetry readings. On February 6th, Bulgarian Ambassador Tihomir Stoytchev was the distinguished host to launch the 2019 William Meredith Award for Poetry and the Valentin Krustev Award for Translation during the sculpture exhibition, NANCY @ NINETY which runs through March 17th at the American University Art Museum.

On March 2, the curator of the exhibition conducted a Q and A with Nancy and fellow artists Sam Noto and Jacqui Concetta.

March 14, Thursday, 6:00 - 7:00 PM, Savoy Bookshop & Cafe', 10 Canal Street, Westerly, Rhode Island 02891:
Meredith Awardee, Tom Kirlin joined local artists Mark Patnode and Serena Bates along with Richard Harteis at the Savoy Bookstore in Westerly, Rhode Island:
https://www.banksquarebooks.com/event/savoy-poets-choice-reading-featuring-tom-kirlin-richard-harteis-mark-patnode-and-serena-bates
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April 12
, Connecticut College will sponsor a symposium on the life and work of William Meredith (details to follow) during National Poetry Month.


FESTCSHRIFT for William
This festschrift is presented as a gift to the “Centennial Celebration of William Meredith: His Legacy of Writing at Connecticut College” April 12, 2019 in gratitude from the William Meredith Foundation and Poets’ Choice Publishing.

https://e-lit.info/index.php/lit-teory/1720-2019-02-10-05-51-42

https://e-lit.info/index.php/autors/1727-2019-02-22-11-16-24

https://www.eurochicago.com/2019/01/meridit/

https://www.eurochicago.com/2019/01/maski/

https://www.duma.bg/vlyuben-v-balgariya-n183846

https://www.budilnik.com/stogodishen-yubilej-na-uilyam-meredit/

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May 9th-12th, 2019 - Bulgaria: Barbara Goldberg and Richard Harteis will represent the foundation in Bulgaria at the Plovdiv Poetry Festival. Bulgaria assumes the presidency of the European Union this year and Plovdiv will host numerous arts programs.

Attached are some recent photos from the Museum opening and Award Ceremony. This winter we were pleased to host Scott Price in Uncasville for research he completed on a Master’s Thesis on the life and work of William Meredith. It has been a busy time, and William continues to be a strong current in the flow of American culture. The foundation is always grateful for contributions which help support these programs (directly to The William Meredith Foundation - 337 Kitemaug Road, Uncasville, Ct. 06382 or through a website for contributions: https://www.gofundme.com/WilliamMeredithCentennial

As a 501.c3 organization, contributions are tax deductible.) For now, we send very best wishes for a pleasant and productive spring.

Richard Harteis
Nancy in front of “Whimsy” which was donated to the Bulgarian Embassy. Many family members came from far and wide to be there for Nancy’s show. There was a tremendous turn out for both events. The embassy kindly provided wine for the award reception which also featured Bulgarian specialities for refreshments.
Award presentation: Richard Harteis, Barbara Goldberg, (winner of the Valentin Krustev Award for Translation) Mrs. Lubka Stoytcheva, Nancy Frankel, Ambassador Tihomir Stoytchev, and Tom Kirlin, winner of the 2019 William Meredith Award for Poetry.
 
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The award is presented to James Beall for his new collection of poetry, ONYX MOON published by New Academia Press. The prize is given in honor of William Meredith, former US Poet Laureate who was a good friend and colleague of Mr. Beall particularly at the Library of Congress when they organized a symposium on science and literature

Annapolis, MD, January 09, 2018 --(PR.com)-- The William Meredith Foundation is proud to present the 2018 Award in Poetry to James Beall, physicist, poet, and professor at St. John's College in Annapolis. The award has no application process, but comes to the author unsolicited in the spirit of generosity that informed William’s interactions with the world of poetry when he judged competitions and supported new talent. A working association with Meredith is not a pre-requisite for awardees, but in Jim Beall’s case, their history as colleagues makes this year’s award particularly fitting and adds a particular glow to the serendipitous decision on the part of the board of directors in choosing Beall. The Meredith Award is only one of the artistic projects supported by the foundation to continue the legacy of this great American spirit, and in this case, recognizes these brothers in the art.

In 1978, Beall approached William at a poetry reading at the Folger Library while Jim was a Congressional Science Fellow at the Office of Technology Assessment for the U.S. Congress. Their collaboration led to The Science and Literature Symposium in 1981, with Beall as co-moderator. The program featured lectures by the the Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, George Wald, O.B. Hardison (then director of the Folger Library), Sir Fred Hoyle, Gerry Pournelle, and Gene Roddenberry of Star Trek fame, among many others.

Jim Beall is an astrophysicist, poet, and author on issues related to public policy and national defense. He holds the degrees of B.A. , M.S., and Ph.D, all in physics. He is a member of the faculty at St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland, and a senior consultant to the U.S. Government. His first book, HICKEY, THE DAYS was published in 1981 by Word Works, and his second book, Republic was published by Toad Hall Press in 2010. The Italian translation, Repubblica, translated by Sabine Pascarelli was published by Toad Hall Press in 2013. Onyx Moon is his third book published by New Academia Press, a very fine publisher that can hang this title high on their wall of honor.

Wind, rain, volcanoes, jungles, and mountains, appear throughout his poetry, and like Audubon he paints his subjects with exactitude of color and precision of detail. Stars shine brilliantly throughout ONYX MOON as one would expect from a physicist. In his poem, “The Fire on Magdalena Mountain,” he recounts travel to the large array of radio telescopes near Soccoro, New Mexico:

They are like flowers tracking a dark sun.
Those distant instruments listen to the sibilant
stars, stars that mimic no human speech. It is a sound
similar to the wind blowing across old ruins,
a level just beneath hearing, that conjures
beyond our capacity to understand or comprehend.

James Beall’s work is at first an enigma. What to make of his challenging vision, his unique voice, the round-about syntax, his penchant for unfamiliar diction, his seemingly schizophrenic take on the world. For here is a poet blessed with double vision, a man who sees the world with both brain and heart, who is fully at home in his bicameral mind, scientist and mystic at once.

Here we see both the careful scientific method of observation leading to a thesis as well as the appreciation of synchronicity that informs the reality of a Reike practitioner or a shaman. The two chevrons, orange-red on a blackbird’s wings at Gettysburg mirror the late sun, the way the speeches of Pericles or Lincoln help his imaginary listeners understand a cause.

In “Military Intelligence,” soldiers digging a foxhole “will make of his or her small space/ a home of sorts, as carefully in place/ as any nest or den the animals/or insects in their pantomime of thought/ would take as ease.” The soldiers here imitate the creatures around them as do the creatures imitating thought.

Friends and critics have sung Jim Beall’s praises over the years, but one thinks of Josephine Jacobsen’s poem, her shock and pleasure when she comes across a real poet, or Emily Dickenson who says you feel like the top of your head has been taken off when you meet the real McCoy. Here he is. The Foundation is so proud to celebrate this rising star, shining among us. As Mr. Spock would say, “live long and prosper James Beall.”

Announcement of this award comes on January 9th, the ninety-ninth anniversary of Meredith’s birth and 11 years after his death in 2007.

Mysteries of Eastern Europe
works by three European Masters
Stoimen Stoilov, Diana Stoilova, & Margarita Voinova


Artists' Reception: Saturday, March 24, 4:00 to 6:30 PM
Curated by: Johnes Ruta

Connecticut Hospice
100 Double Beach Rd
Branford, CT 06405


Directions

Exhibition: February 27 to April 12, 2018 10AM - 8PM daily

Stoimen Stoilov - "Woman and Bird"
etching 31" x 24"



Stoimen Stoilov - "Power"
etching 32" x 26 1/2"

STOIMEN STOILOV was born in Varna, Bulgaria in 1944 and is a graduate of the National Academy of Fine Arts in Sofia, Bulgaria. He leads his visual articulations with a Surrealist nature, and works in his studio in Vienna.

For Stoimen, line is a justified dominating force, and his visions are rich with symbolism and indigenous history. His poetic visions encourage viewers to imagine mythic traditions and lore. He spent time living among the Aborigines in Australia, one of the many cultural influences in his work. His art has also been influenced by the poetry of friends like Lyubomir Levchev (b. 1935) Poet Laureate of Bulgaria, William Meredith (1919-2007) Poet Laureate of the United States 1978-1980, and the poet Richard Harteis (b.1946).

In 1991, Stoimen Stoilov was awarded Gottfried Von Herder Prize by The University of Vienna. His work resides in Museum of Graphic Arts Albertine, Vienna; the National Museums of Art in Sofia, Columbia, Germany, Norway, and Switzerland; the Pushkin Museum, Moscow; the Bibliotheque Nationale de France, Paris; Yale University; the NY Public Library, and the U.S. Library of Congress, Washington. His most recent shows were a large 2015 retrospective, including two 8 foot wide murals at the Slater Museum in Norwich, and exhibitions at UCONN Avery Point, Groton, CT; New Haven, CT; and Westerly, RI.

Stoimen Stoilov is a first-class engraver for in his recent work he has attained a maturity of touch, an expressivity of line, and a dynamism of the imaginaire which transcends not only the frontiers of reality, but also those of forms. The work of Stoilov is marked by a new vision which scrutinizes the unequalled detail, the most obscure recesses of the body of the being, of the animal, of nature and environment. The minutae of details reveal, as under an X-ray, the articulations and body language of all our living bodies. If at times human beings and things appear in their skeletal elements, they do not for that reason fail to acquire a lightness which makes them float in space, a space overflowing the geometric forms of a picture, a diptych or triptych, to let themselves go freely in movement, in the conquest of new imaginary landscapes.

Margarita Voinova - "Dream Garden"
oil on board, 20" x 12"
Margarita Voinova - "Fairy Tale of Old"
oil on board, 20" x 12"


MARGARITA VOINOVA, younger sister of Stoimen Stoilov, was born in Varna, Bulgaria, where she lives and works. Her hand woven tapestries decorate many hotels, banks, restaurants and cultural clubs in Bulgaria and abroad. Her paintings and watercolors are in the possession of numerous galleries, museums, and private collections in Germany, France, Norway, Italy, Finland, USA, Australia and Lebanon. She finds in her works primary archaic signs, created in a pristine naive world bound to the mythology of Earth and Air. For the artist these signs, symbolizing birds, fish and human beings embody the primary idea of the Universe and the understanding among the formations of this world. These symbols are tranquil, intense, simple, tangible and understandable by all people. The artist finds these signs in the traditions of the world civilizations and in her own being. Her contact with the Australian aborigines and their art has been a unique experience. The harmony of colour and shape is striking, surprising, and after all, convincing: through her works, the artist starts a journey back to ancient civilizations, to a culture, shared by all people.



Diana Stoilova - "Fish"
oil on board, 18"h x 24"w


Diana Stoilova - "Window"
oil on board, 24"h x 18"h

DIANA STOILOVA, daughter of Stoimen Stoilov, lives and works in Vienna, Austria. She was among a small group of artists first shown at UCONN's Alexey Von Schlippe Gallery at Avery Point in Groton, CT in 2000, when this exhibition was visited by the Vice President of Bulgaria.

In 1994, she studied at the Academy of the Beaux Arts in Sofia, Bulgaria, where she attended a Master Class for Pressure Graphics. In 1997, she studied at the Applied Arts in Vienna. Works of the artist are in the collections of the Graphics Museum Carpenter, Bath Steben, Germany, the Dialogue Foundation, Pris, France, the Griffis Art Center, New London, CT, and in other private collections.

**********************************************************************************
Exhibition: February 27 to April 12, 2018

Hours: Visiting Hours Daily 10AM - 8 PM

Curated by: Johnes Ruta, independent curator & art theorist
203.387.4933, http://AzothGallery.com/
azothgallery@comcast.net

Katherine Blossom, Arts Director
Connecticut Hospice

Richard Harteis, President of the William Meredith Foundation,
represnetative of the Stoilov's artwork in the United States.
Our special event at the
Bulgarian Embassy
Washington, D.C.
September 16, 2017

celebrating a number of recently published poets by
Poets Choice Publishing (poets-choice.com)
including the 2017 awardee of The William Meredith Award for Poetry given
to Florida Poet Laureate, Peter Meinke.
The event was free and open to the public.
Videos by Johnes Ruta, WMF Board Member.
Setsuko Ono and the Washington Sculpture Group
A 30 minute film covering the life of our friend Setsuko Ono was aired by Nippon Television in Japan on August 3rd, 2016.
This video was taken by Nippon Television at WSG Sculpture Salon in June 2016:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/6msegpukzml9sj4/Studio%20Ono%20subtitles.mov?dl=0

Bulgaria TV News coverage of scattering of William Meredith's ashes. September, 2016.
 
2017 Letter from the President

This fall, I had the good fortune to return to Bulgaria through the generous support of a classmate, Bob Storck. I had thought to take a small portion of William’s ashes to the Rila Monastery outside Blagoevgrad where we lived for two years during my Fulbright at the American University. It was to have been a private moment, but friends soon convinced me that this was a “national” event given William’s work to establish a bridge between our two countries when he was US Poet Laureate. And so the event was covered extensively by the Bulgarian media including 24 Hours and Standartnews, among others:

Account of our visit on TRUD Newspaper:

Visit to Luybomir Levchev:

Writers Union Newspaper (go to page 11):
http://sbp.bg/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/br_28.pdf

My training as a Roman Catholic, however, proscribed such a division of a person’s cremains and I had to give some thought to what I was about to do at the monastery. Here is what I wrote in preparation for any media questions about the “theological legitimacy” of what I intended to do. The question sometimes comes up when a loved one has died and has made it clear what they wished by way of burial. Here is how I addressed the question in preparation for the ceremony at the Monastery September 21, 2016:

When I was young, I was taught that in marriage, it was the two people marrying each other who performed the sacrament of marriage and that the priest and assembled friends at the ceremony were only witnesses of the love God expressed in the vow the couple were making to each other. In death as in life, it may be true too that a communal expression of the love felt toward the one who has died, may also be blessed by God – he certainly can not be offended when the creatures he has created reach out to Him for solace and hope for eternal life in a gesture such as this, the formal recognition of dust to dust, letting the spirit of the beloved ride the winds or as Mrs. Lemington says in a poem by William Meredith, “I’d like to drift as ashes over the fields, and give them that much back.” In another poem, Edward John Trelawney says that, “The waters may keep the dead, as the earth may, and fire and air. But dream is my element.” And in dream once, Baba Vanga seemed to Answer the question if one day these mountains would be a final resting place.

As William lay dying, I worried to the Episcopal priest that my education held that one’s cremains could not be partitioned but must lie together in consecrated ground despite William’s desire that his be delivered to the river where we lived. “Ours is a powerful God” the priest told me with great sympathy, “and on the day of judgment he can surely reassemble us for the final resurrection.”

Let these ashes only be a symbol of the spirit of a man whose courage, and talent and humanity has touched so many of us and continues to make its way through the chambers of our heart in America and in his beloved second homeland, Bulgaria. We thank God for such models of humanity, and pray that Christ take him in His loving arms for all eternity.

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IN MEMORIAM

It is with great sadness that we note the death of recently-appointed Board member, Valentin Krustev who died suddenly of a heart attack on June 3, 2016, at his home in Sofia, Bulgaria. This gentle spirit and brilliant intellect was friend, collaborator and cicerone to William and me for decades. He was an essential bridge between the foundation and Bulgaria and is irreplaceable. Here is my tribute to this dear friend and artist.


The Translator

To Valentin

No word is too long until the word
comes that your are gone, and gone
now another world, another life
you brought me through translation.

Your art was like a window pane
Through which a reader met a poet
And his poem, with never a smudge
Of your own ego on the clear glass.

But it wasn’t only the meaning,
it was the thing itself you showed me:
It was never a question of right or
Wrong: This simply is how we raise
our children, how we eat our soup.

A brash American overly sure of
Himself and his culture, learned a bit
The subtlety of silence, the elegance
Produced by history, the need and skill
to work and live in the hive at peace.

Quiet, master diplomat, smile on me again:
Translate me at the end of my own days.
The faults will be obvious enough.

I rely on your constant goodness, your talent
to intuit what I may have done well and speak
on my behalf brother, even if, at times, you must
“cloud the pane between us and the stars.”



With Love from Richard

Valentin Krustev and William Meredith at Svetlana's beach in Waterford
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LITERATURE
Our special event at the
Bulgarian Embassy
Washington, D.C.
September 16, 2017

celebrating a number of recently published poets by
Poets Choice Publishing (poets-choice.com)
including the 2017 awardee of The William Meredith Award for Poetry given
to Florida Poet Laureate, Peter Meinke.
The event was free and open to the public.
 
Videos by Johnes Ruta, WMF Board Member.

PROGRAM FOR SEPTEMBER 16, 2017 6:00 -8:00 PM


6:00 RECEPTION AND BOOK DISPLAY FOR POETS CHOICE PUBLISHING

6:30 GREETING AND INTRODUCTION OF WILLIAM MEREDITH FOUNDATOIN BY AMBASADOR STOYTCHEV

6:40 WELCOM BY RICHARD HARTEIS AND INTRODUCTION OF POETS AND GUESTS AND BULGARIAN CULTURAL ATTACHE, TATYANA KARADZHOVA

6:55 PRESENTATION OF FILM ON WILLIAM MEREDITH: Ct. Film on William Meredith (3 MINUTES)

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qugmOD162sAFilm on William Meredith

7:00 TOM KIRLIN, WMF SECRETARY READS “THE GOOD DOCTOR” BY PETER MEINKE.

7:05 YOUTUBE CLIP OF PETER MEINKE READING HIS POETRY (ENDS AFTER THE POEM TO HIS MOTHER, DO NOT INCLUDE THE WALLACE STEVENS POEM ETC. SELECTION ENDS AT MINUTE 8:11)

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CjwAweavlY

7:15 ANITRA THORHAUG (WIDOW OF THE 2015 WILLIAM MEREDITH AWARDEE FOR POETRY, ANDREW OERKE READS TITLE POEM FROM ELEPHANT CAKE WALK AND “IN THE VILLAGE.”

7:20 YOUTUBE CLIP OF RILA MONASTERY ( 1:30 MINUTES)

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ryy2K3WTs9Y

7:20 RICHARD HARTEIS READS FROM REUNION (P.140-145 DELETING PHOTOS AND P. 142)

7:25 POET BARBARA GOLDBERG READS ONE POEM, “NOVEMBER” (P,. 13) FROM LAURA BRYLAWSKI-MILLER’S BOOK, FIRST DO NO HARM.

7:30 WILLIAM M. RIVERA READS ONE poem from CAFÉ SELECT.

7:35 ELISAVIETTA RITCHIE READS ONE POEM FROM HARBINGERS.

7:40 JOHNES RUTA READS FROM FIRES ETERNAL MORNING

7:45 YOUTUBE CLIP OF 2016 WILLIAM MEREDITH AWARDEE FOR POETRY, GRAY JACOBIK READING “ANGEL SEX” PLEASE CLIP 26:16 TO 28:41 PORTION OF THE CLIP.

7: 50 QUESTOINS, COMMENTS AND CONTINUING RECEEPTION UNTIL 8:15 MAXIMUM. Â FLYERS TO ORDER BOOKS MADE AVAILABLE TO GUESTS. NOTE: BOOKS CAN NOT BE SOLD AT THE EMBASSY

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5U6Ry4OBO4

 
Setsuko Ono and the Washington Sculpture Group
A 30 minute film covering the life of our friend Setsuko Ono was aired by Nippon Television in Japan on August 3rd, 2016.
This video was taken by Nippon Television at WSG Sculpture Salon in June 2016:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/6msegpukzml9sj4/Studio%20Ono%20subtitles.mov?dl=0

Bulgaria TV News coverage of scattering of William Meredith's ashes. September, 2016.
 
2017 Letter from the President

This fall, I had the good fortune to return to Bulgaria through the generous support of a classmate, Bob Storck. I had thought to take a small portion of William’s ashes to the Rila Monastery outside Blagoevgrad where we lived for two years during my Fulbright at the American University. It was to have been a private moment, but friends soon convinced me that this was a “national” event given William’s work to establish a bridge between our two countries when he was US Poet Laureate. And so the event was covered extensively by the Bulgarian media including 24 Hours and Standartnews, among others:

Account of our visit on TRUD Newspaper:

Visit to Luybomir Levchev:

Writers Union Newspaper (go to page 11):
http://sbp.bg/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/br_28.pdf

My training as a Roman Catholic, however, proscribed such a division of a person’s cremains and I had to give some thought to what I was about to do at the monastery. Here is what I wrote in preparation for any media questions about the “theological legitimacy” of what I intended to do. The question sometimes comes up when a loved one has died and has made it clear what they wished by way of burial. Here is how I addressed the question in preparation for the ceremony at the Monastery September 21, 2016:

When I was young, I was taught that in marriage, it was the two people marrying each other who performed the sacrament of marriage and that the priest and assembled friends at the ceremony were only witnesses of the love God expressed in the vow the couple were making to each other. In death as in life, it may be true too that a communal expression of the love felt toward the one who has died, may also be blessed by God – he certainly can not be offended when the creatures he has created reach out to Him for solace and hope for eternal life in a gesture such as this, the formal recognition of dust to dust, letting the spirit of the beloved ride the winds or as Mrs. Lemington says in a poem by William Meredith, “I’d like to drift as ashes over the fields, and give them that much back.” In another poem, Edward John Trelawney says that, “The waters may keep the dead, as the earth may, and fire and air. But dream is my element.” And in dream once, Baba Vanga seemed to Answer the question if one day these mountains would be a final resting place.

As William lay dying, I worried to the Episcopal priest that my education held that one’s cremains could not be partitioned but must lie together in consecrated ground despite William’s desire that his be delivered to the river where we lived. “Ours is a powerful God” the priest told me with great sympathy, “and on the day of judgment he can surely reassemble us for the final resurrection.”

Let these ashes only be a symbol of the spirit of a man whose courage, and talent and humanity has touched so many of us and continues to make its way through the chambers of our heart in America and in his beloved second homeland, Bulgaria. We thank God for such models of humanity, and pray that Christ take him in His loving arms for all eternity.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Ancient Greek legend performed at Thames River’s edge

Harold Blackhood portrays Apollo and Katia Jirankova Levanti as "Daphne."

Story in The New London Day:
Published August 12. 2016 2:53PM | Updated August 12. 2016 3:00PM
By Amy J. Barry


http://www.theday.com/aemusic/20160812/ancient-greek-legend-to-be-performed-at-thames-rivers-edge

In the legend of Daphne, while fleeing from Apollo's passionate pursuit, the river nymph cries out to her father, Peneus, the river god, to save her, and he transforms her into a laurel tree.

"Daphne" will be re-enacted in an original short dance and musical presentation on Aug. 20 at Riverrun, the late William Meredith's beautiful home on the Thames River in Uncasville and the perfect setting to bring Ovid's Greek myth to life.
Richard Harteis, president of the William Meredith Foundation and Meredith's longtime partner, conceived the performance along with Brett Raphael, founder and artistic director of the Connecticut Ballet and creator of The New London Dance Initiative that is aimed at increasing dance exposure and training for the city's youth.

August 17 - 21, 2016
<
 
CONGRATULATIONS TO GRAY JACOBIK,
A FINALIST AMONG THE FOLLOWING
FOR THIS YEAR’S CONNECTICUT BOOK AWARD,
PRESENTED OCTOBER 22, 2017!

Poetry

The Banquet by Gray Jacobik
Barrel Children by Rayon Lennon
The Meeting House by Marilyn Nelson
Fugitives by Danielle Pieratti

https://ctcenterforthebook.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/combine_banquet.jpg

http://events.courant.com/events/view/394358/2017_connecticut_book_awards.html

 
 
Richard Harteis and New London Mayor Michael Passero
THE 2015 WILLIAM MEREDITH AWARD FOR POETRY PRESENTED POSTHUMOUSLY TO POET
ANDREW OERKE

INCLUDING PUBLICATION OF HIS NEW AND SELECTED POEM, THE WALL
BY POETS CHOICE PUBLISHING.


FOR FULL INFORMATION AND THE PRESS RELEASE
PLEASE CLICK HERE
Andrew Oerke
 
THE 2014 WILLIAM MEREDITH AWARD FOR POETRY PRESENTED TO POET
NATASHA TRETHEWEY
 
THE 2013 WILLIAM MEREDITH AWARD FOR POETRY PRESENTED TO POET
LYUBOMIR LEVCHEV
GREEN-WINGED HORSE
new and selected poems by
Lyubomir Levchev
($24.95 (7" X 10") Little Red Tree; 254 pages,
with 41 color and black & white paintings,
illustrations and photos)


Art Work by Stoimen Stoilov

Translations from Bulgarian by Valentin Krustev
Edited by Richard Harteis
"Lyubomir Levchev, the poems you write are written by the sky
and the street and the old people who died 400 years ago and the little kids
who will be born 400 years from now and they are poems of profound joy
and swift sorrow…" ~ William Saroyan
Green-Winged Horse features a great number of new poems, uniquely translated
by Valentin Krustev, one of William’s oldest friends who was one of the
very first translators assigned to William when he first began
attending Peace the Hope of the Planet, the writers' conferences sponsored
by the Union of Bulgarian Writers over the decades..
Here once again, history and talent come together in friendly synchronicity.
THE 2012 WILLIAM MEREDITH AWARD FOR POETRY PRESENTED TO POET
DAVID FISHER
 

David Fisher
Sacramento, CA - David Lincoln Fisher, 72, award winning poet, died Feb. 2, 2015.
Fisher graduated summa cum laude from Duke University on an Angier B. Duke scholarship and completed course work for a doctorate at Yale University on a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship. He had further studies at the University of Tubingen and the Sorbonne.
Born March 16, 1942, Fisher taught college courses in poetry in the California Bay Area for many years. He published several books of his poetry and received two National Foundation for the Arts fellowships. He was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for "The Book of Madness" and won the first annual Poetry Society of America's William Carlos Williams award for the best book of poetry in America (1978) for his book "Teachings".
Fisher's last work, "I Hear Always the Dogs on the Hospital Roof", a collection of his poetry, was published in 2012 by the William Meredith Foundation.

***********************************
http://clubz.bg/38874-poetite___biblejskite_ptichki_bojii_koito_nito_seqt_nito_jynat_nito_pylnqt_hambari


On April 18th of the National Poetry Month in the USA, at a sitting of the City Council of New London, CT, Mayor Michael Passero proclaimed Friday, April 22, William Meredith Day in honor of the late USA Poet Laureate, resident of Uncasville, CT, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.

In this connection, I interviewed Richard Harteis, President of the William Meredith Foundation, writer and close friend of the great American poet. Meredith, who passed away in 2007, is a citizen of Bulgaria and of the City of Smolyan.
"Poets - 'The Biblical “Birds of the Air That Neither Sow Nor Reap Nor Store Away in Barns': Richard Harteis tells about the honorary Bulgarian citizen William Meredith and poetry in the USA".

Interview by Valentin Krustev with Richard Harteis with Three poems by Gray Jacobik translated into Bulgarian by Valentin Krustev


 

AN AUTUMN AFTERNOON OF POETRY
BOOK ANNOUNCEMENTS AND READINGS
THE WRITERS' CENTER
BETHESDA, MARYLAND
NOVEMBER 22, 2015
William Meredith Foundation Board
Nancy Frankel (treasurer), Richard Harteis (President), Grace Cavalieri, Johnes Ruta.
Elisavietta Ritchie
Tom Kirlin
   
Grace Cavalieri
Artist Katia Jirankova
   
Johnes Ruta
Richard Harteis
Nancy Frankel and sculpture
Sunil Freeman of the Bethesda Writers' Center introduces Richard Harteis, President of the William Meredith Foundation for a Poetry and book reading. November 22, 2015.
Readings: Tim Kirlin; Grace Cavalieri; Elisavietta Ritchie; Johnes Ruta (no video);
Richard Harteis; Daniel Levanti, sung poetry; artist Katia Jarinkova; sculptor Nancy Frankel.
Videos by: Johnes Ruta.
Introduction by William Meredith Foundation President Richard Harteis
Rennie McQuilkin
CT Poet Laureate
Margaret Gibson
   
Grae Jacobik
Mary Posner
   
Ravi Shankar
Johnes Ruta
ANDREW OERKE CELEBRATION AT YALE UNVIERSITY

Andrew Oerke celebration at Yale University, School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. On September 28th at the Marsh Hall Rotunda, the foundation sponsored a poetry reading and video presentation of the 2015 William Meredith Award to Andrew Oerk. Link to video of the program is forthcoming. Pictured below are some of the participants of the event from left to right:

Prof. Graeme P. Berlyn, PhD, Editor: Journal of Sustainable Forestry; Prof.Anitra Thornhaug (with book); Dr. Dana Raphael, Director and founder Human Lactation Foundation; Helene Harvey of Houston Medical Facility; Dr. Helen Mills Poulos, Research Associate, Wesleyan University; Mimi Sommer, writer & photographer. Back row:, Dr. Ryan C. Jackson, Dean, Caribbean Medical School; Dr. Mary Berlyn, Research Scientist Emeritus, Yale Dept. of Biology; Dr. John Hall, Yale Divinity School; Johnes Ruta, Vice President of the William Meredith Foundation; and Richard Harteis, President, (with book).

***********************************
THE SLATER MUSEUM OF NORWICH
Bridge of Light
Artistic Illumination from the Balkans

GREAT ART AND A GREAT TIME WAS HAD BY ALL AT BRIDGE OF LIGHT: ARTISTIC ILLUMINATION FROM THE BALKANS AT THE OPENING RECEPTION ON JUNE 21ST.

State Representative, Kevin Ryan reads a letter
from Norwich Mayor Deberey Hinchey.
New London City Councilman, Michael Passero admires Mark Patnode's painting.
Participating artists: Catherine Doocy, Christopher Zhang and Debi Pendell.
Artist Dan Potter and participating artist, Anne Seelbach

This exhibition runs through August 28. Please note other foundation evens this summer sponsored in part by the museum. Also, we will have a poetry celebration of the 2015 William Meredith Award for Poetry at the Courtyard Gallery in Mystic, July 26th at 4:00 and a program featuring Poets Choice Publishing at Bank Square Books in Mystic on September 20th at 1:00. More information on these additional events coming soon. Hope you are having a great summer!

Richard Harteis, President of the William Meredith Foundation introduces Anitra Thornhaugh, PhD (Environmental Scientist, Yale) to receive the William Meredith Award awarded posthumously for her late husband ANDREW OERKE..
Left to right: Nancy Frankel, Treasurer of the William Meredith Foundation; Richard Harteis; Anitra Thornhaug; CT State Representative Kevin Ryan; Professor Graeme Berlyn, Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Science.
Video by Johnes Ruta, VP the William Meredith Foundation.
The Slater Museum, Norwich CT, USA. Sunday, June 21, 2015.
Hugh Fisher, David Fisher’s brother has sent us the following obituary. We mourn David’s passing but are grateful that he gave us his work and spirit for the first William Meredith Award for Poetry.
David Fisher

Sacramento, CA – David Lincoln Fisher, 72, internationally known, award-winning poet, died Feb. 2, 2015.

Fisher was a graduate of Rolesville, NC, high school and graduated summa cum laude from Duke University on an Angier B. Duke scholarship. He later completed course work for a doctorate at Yale University on a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship. He had further studies at the University of Tubingen and the Sorbonne.

Fisher taught college courses in English and poetry in the San Francisco Bay area for many years. He published several books of his poetry and received two National Foundation for the Arts fellowships. He was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for “The Book of Madness” and won the first annual Poetry Society of America’s William Carlos Williams award for the best book of poetry in America (1978) for his book “Teachings”.

Fisher’s last work, “I Hear Always the Dogs on the Hospital Roof”, a collection of his poetry, was published in 2012 as the first William Meredith Award for Poetry.

He is survived by his brother Hugh Fisher (Serena Parks Fisher) of Winter Springs, FL and his niece Elizabeth Fisher Goad (Dean Goad) of Okinawa, Japan. He was predeceased by his father the Rev. Ben C. Fisher and mother Sara Gehman Fisher.

Memorial gifts may be made to the William Meredith Foundation, 337 Kitemaug Road, Uncasville, CT 06382.

 
U.S. Congressman Joe Courtney
Richard Harteis with Bruce Harvey (son of USS Thresher
Captain John Harvey)
U.S. Congressman Joe Courtney and Richard Harteis

STOIMEN REVISITED

A decade ago, the Lyman Allyn Museum welcomed the master painter, Stoimen Stoilov from Bulgaria for an extraordinary one man show. Stoimen created heroic canvases assembled in the museum itself which have not been available to the public since that remarkable show. On June 7th, the Provenance Center is pleased to offer a brief second look at these works, in preparation for a major retrospective to take place at the Slater Museum next June, 2015.

In the New London Day review of that Lyman Allyn Show, NEW WORKS FROM EUROPE COMBINE A MASTER’S TOUCH WITH AN ARRESTING VISION, Day critic, Rick Koster writes that the works, “display a paradoxically futuristic interpretation of the mysticism and mythology appropriate to both eastern and western Europe. Fasten your seatbelt, then, and join the ghosts of other travelers who’ve apparently been inside his brain a while: Hieronymous Bosch, Albrecht Dürer, Pan and his eclectic and recurring entourage of Greco-Roman deities and mythmakers, Leonardo DaVinci and maybe the painter/patricide Richard Dadd.”

In addition to the massive murals, STOIMEN REVISITED features etchings from ECHOES, the art folio book “illustrating” the poetry of William Meredith. This limited edition masterwork can be found in special collections libraries at Yale, Princeton, the New York Public Library, and Connecticut College among others, but can now be viewed easily, without a library card or special permission.

In Stoimen’s native Bulgaria, when winter seems finally over and to greet the spring, people offer each other a martenitsa, small amulets made of red and white yarn that one must tie to a tree for luck when they see the first bird of spring. And throughout the summer, birds’ nests across the country have these red and white threads woven into them. In this spirit of luck and affection, the William Meredith Foundation is pleased to offer this small jewel of an exhibition to welcome summer and all the joys it portends. Come raise a glass with us at the opening reception June 7th 7-9:00.

Please click on the following image for a little slide show of opening night:
CONGREGATION - Poetry by US Poet Laureate, Natasha Trethewey

We are pleased to announce the publication of CONGREGATION as the 2014 William Meredith Award for Poetry given to US Poet Laureate, Natasha Trethewey. Individual copies can be purchased through Poets-Choice. Com at the Pay Pal donate button for $12.95 (with free shipping.)

CONGREGATION will soon be available on Amazon at the following link:
http://www.amazon.com/Congregation-Poems-By-Natasha-Trethewey/dp/1928755240/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1399140539&sr=8-1&keywords=congregation%2C+Poems+by+Natasha+Trethewey

Book Store DISCOUNTS for bulk sales available by contacting:

MarathonFilm@gmail.com or telelphone 860-961-5138

Richard Harteis

p.s. As noted in an earlier message, Ben Panciera has re-vitalized the Connecticut College website which so beautifully organizes William’s papers and scholarship. Please check it out and bookmark the following link if you wish to take a look: collections.conncoll.edu/meredith

FROM THE FOREWORD of CONGREGATION:

The William Meredith Foundation is honored to present the 2014 award for poetry to Natasha Trethewey. Beyond the fact that both poets served at the Library of Congress, the award recognizes a shared aesthetic and level of achievement. When Meredith was writing poems, his goal was that they be "useful," that they speak to audiences "In the heart's duress, on the heart's behalf." For Meredith, poetry is essentially an act of communication in the language of the human tribe, not an exercise in intellectual posturing or exhibitionism. His work is accessible and deceptively simple. He speaks to us with a moral authority and finally, like Trethewey, feels impelled "to offer somebody/uncomprehending, impudent thanks." Congregation is such a document, a "love letter to the Gulf Coast, a praise song, a dirge, invocation and benediction, a requiem for the Gulf Coast." Here are the people of the Mississippi Gulf Coast after Katrina, speaking to her with the folk wisdom, and faith, of the survivor. "Without faith, we is victims," one church marquee proclaims, and another, with a different kind of eloquence, "God is not/ the author of fear." A pilgrim, she returns to the Gulf Coast and her people, but finds home to be "but a cradle of the past." She cannot enter the church service, "standing at the vestibule - neither in, nor out," and can only watch, her face against the glass, attempting to face the things that confront her. By the end of the cycle, however, she has earned the Whitmanesque final line of the poems, "native daughter: I am the Gulf Coast."

CONGREGATION Front cover
CONGREGATION Back cover
A NOTE FROM THE PRESIDENT

We are pleased to announce the publication of CONGREGATION as the 2014 William Meredith Award for Poetry given to US Poet Laureate, Natasha Trethewey. Individual copies can be purchased through this
Poets-Choice.com PayPal Order button for $12.95


Book Store DISCOUNTS for bulk sales are available by contacting:

MarathonFilm@gmail.com or telelphone 860-961-5138

 
Congregation, poems by Natasha Trethewey
Poet Laureate of the United States

The poems of Natasha Trethewey’s Congregation are the result of Hurricane Katrina and the earlier hurricane, Camille, and their terrible impacts on those who live in the hard-hit communities along the Gulf Coast, including her family. They are love letters, praise songs, dirges, invocations, and benedictions; they are also homages to the everyday people who “gather our / food, and those who grow it clean it, cook it / who bring it to our tables.” The opening poem, “Invocation,” asks for the grace needed to tell their story and to thank God for the ability to remember them.

Bless the travellers who gather
our food, and those who grow it, clean it,
who bring it to our tables. Bless the laborers
whose faces we do not see – like the girl
my grandmother was, walking the rails home:

bless us that we remember.


Grace Cavalieri,
Washington Independent Review of Books:
"When we read these poems we know what Trethewey beliieves — we see the blood in her veins. Next, we know how principled poetry can emerge from a darker world; and then, we see, when all around us crumbles, the complexity of the human spirit –and consequences of suffering that can be redeemed. When the poet liberates herself, she liberates others; and that is why we call writing a moral life. Trethewey reflects reality with lyrical force. She’s not afraid to live; she’s not afraid to carry the freight of knowledge; she creates carefully from the boundaries of loss and turns it to poetry. Out of cultural disorder comes Congregation, a celebration, so get your God on. Poetry is holy work."

Congregation is the recipient of the 2014 Award for Poetry by The William Meredith Foundation.

Natasha Trethewey is the author of Thrall (2012), Native Guard (Houghton Mifflin), Bellocq’s Ophelia (Graywolf, 2002), and Domestic Work (Graywolf, 2000). She is also the author of Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast (University of Georgia Press). She has been awarded a Pulitzer Prize and has had fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2012, she was appointed the State Poet Laureate of Mississippi and in 2013, Poet Laureate of the U.S. Throughout 2013, she joined Jeffrey Brown in a series of on-location broadcast reports for the PBS News Hour exploring issues that matter to Americans through the framework of poetry. She is presently the Robert W. Woodruff Professor of English and Creative Writing at Emory University.

Congregation
by Natasha Trethewey

Foreword by
Richard Harteis

17 pp. 5 x 7-3/4

Perfectbound, $12.95

ISBN: 978-1-928755-24-1

co-published with
The William Meredith Foundation
www.WilliamMeredithFoundation.org

Free Shipping

STUDIO GALLERY: Book Launch, Reception, and
Sculpture Preview

Studio Gallery and the William Meredith Foundation cordially
invite you to the launching of Tom Kirlin’s debut book of poetry

UNDER THE POTATO MOON

with art gallery presentation of
NancyFrankel’s sculpture. Please join us for light refreshments, good
cheer, and friendship to help celebrate National Poetry Month.

www.WilliamMeredithFoundation.org


WHEN: Sun, April 21, 2014 4pm – 6pm

WHERE: Studio Gallery: 2108 R St., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20008

tel- 202-232-8734
       
Book cover
Tom Kirlin
Nancy Frankel
WILL SHIP THE BOOK TO YOU WHEN YOU PLACE THE ORDER THROUGH US.
WE CAN PROVIDE BULK DISCOUNTS FOR BOOK STORES.
FULFILL YOUR ORDER HERE:

Richard Harteis
p.s. As noted in an earlier message, Ben Panciera has re-vitalized the Connecticut College website which so beautifully organizes William’s papers and scholarship. Please check it out and bookmark the following link if you wish to take a look: collections.conncoll.edu/meredith
Petyo Varbanov, Second Secretary Political Section, Embassy of the Republic of Bulgaria;
Nancy Frankel; Richard Harteis; visiting Congressman Joe Courtney
Embassy of Bulgaria -- October 15, 2013
Oct 3, 2013 7:00 pm


Hygienic Gallery, October 3rd, 7:00 to 9:00 pm
featuring Lyubomir Levchev, Poet Laureate
of Bulgaria, and the 2013 William Meredith Award
for Poetry for Tom Kirlin, and his new book.

Hygienic Art Gallery
79 Bank Street
New London, CT
860-443-8001
Oct 6, 2013 2:00 pm

Award for Poetry Reception -
The William Meredith Foundation



R.J. Julia Bookstore in Madison Ct, October 6th at 2:00 pm
featuring Lyubomir Levchev, Williams French translations,
CROSSING OVER, and Ann Lauinger’s new publication,
AGAINST BUTTERFLIES

68 Boston Post Rd.
Madison, Connecticut

click R.J Julia logo or book-cover for RJ Julia details

October 26th

CELEBRATION OF LITTLE RED TREE PUBLICATIONS

Provenance Center
165 State Street
New London, CT 06320
860-405-5887



Dear Friends, we have four exciting events coming in October and we hope you will be able to join us for one of the poetry presentations we offer. I am just back from travels in Bulgaria to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Union of Bulgarian Writers and the 10th International Conference dedicated to the strength and weakness of language. It was an excellent opportunity to catch up with old friends such as Nikolay Petev. He was fragile, but heroic in his efforts to present these moving celebrations of Bulgarian literature and international friendship among writers. I gave a reading of my poetry in Bourgas on the Black Sea and visited with this year’s winner of the William Meredith Award for Poetry, Lyubomir levchev. We will be celebrating his GREEN-WINGED HORSE and works by Tom Kirlin and Anne Lauinger at several events in October and we certainly hope you will join us for one or more. Here then are links to the events and background information on the authors, as well as a little photo journal of this recent trip to Bulgaria. See you soon I hope and thank you for your support. Richard Harteis for the William Meredith Foundation.

 

Tom Kirlin, Rita Dawley, Richard Harteis, and Nancy Frankel
relax at Riverrun just before Tom's reading.
Award for Poetry
Reception -
The William Meredith Foundation
Oct 6 2013 2:00 pm

68 Boston Post Rd.
Madison, Connecticut 06443
Phone: (203) 245-3959 or (800) 74-READS

Peter Curman, Dora Boneva, Lyubomir Levchev and Jack Hart at the 100th anniversary of the Union of Bulgarian Writers, Sofia, September 9/21/2013
Jack Hart, Valentin Krustev and Corina Stirb Cooper at the Writers' Conference
October 15 Embassy of Bulgaria reception (By invitation)
October 26th Provenance Center
CELEBRATION OF LITTLE RED TREE PUBLICATIONS
165 State Street
New London, CT 06320
860-405-5887
Dear Friends,

I am back from travels in France and Bulgaria along with our treasurer, Nancy Frankel and feel feel a bit little like a student returning to school after vacation being asked to write an essay of "what I did last summer." But it's been a while since I've written, friends have been curious, and there is a lot to report.

It was a great though sometimes demanding trip, just shy of a month of travel. In Paris, we stayed with the translator of CROSSING OVER, the bi-lingual book of William's poetry published this year with illustrations by Sooky Maniquant, Marc Albert.

(http://williammeredithfoundation.org/foundation-publications.htm)

Marc was a very generous host and arranged for a launching of the book and an exhibition of Sooky's work he and Nancy mounted at a fine bookstore, La Lucarne. The internet journal they publish printed a French translation of my poem on the shootings at Newtown, Ct. and the reading was very well received. A lovely artist we met through him, Ivan Sigg created a beautiful award certificate for our next engagement. Living with Marc was a bit like living in a Buddhist monastery since every day we were called to the practice of Nicheren Buddhism (Nam myo ho renge ko) where we met an extraordinary group of Parisian mailto:jb593@georgetown.eduarisianacolytes from different professions and backgrounds. What an experience, what nice and gentle folk.

During a visit to the US embassy, we left books with our Cultural Attache in Paris and got the lay of the land from her point of view. And we continued work on the final version of GREEN-WINGED HORSE, this year's William Meredith Award for Poetry recipient, Lyubomir Levchev. Unfortunately, some very clever pick pockets got hold of my wallet and more or less wiped me out. Fortunately, my travel companion was able to bail me out. Lesson: Don't assume the hip chain wallet you carry is safe and always travel with your treasurer. I did my best, and succeeded fairly well not to let it spoil the trip with a fair amount of chanting with our host and his friends.

On May 22nd we flew to Bulgaria and presented GREEN-WINGED HORSE book under the auspices of the American University of Bulgaria and hospitality of President Easton. GREEN-WINGED HORSE will be available soon through Little Red Tree press and is sponsored in part by the Griffis Art Center. This book has been beautifully translated by our friend Valentin Krustev who accompanied us on our travels in Bulgaria. It was great to see old friends from my Fulbright days in Blagoevgrad, one of whom, Lucien Liko had prepared a model for a portrait bust of William to be created in the near future for presentation. In Sofia on the 24, the national holiday for Saints Cyril and Methodius we presented the formal award to Lyubomir at the at a William Merdith celebration given by the Cyril and Methodius Foundation. Among the friends and dignitaries were Nikolay Petev (head of the Union of Bulgarian Writers) and recently-elected member of parliament and his wife Theodora, former officials of the foundation and a group of young poets who all read a poem in honor of Lyubomir and William. During the visit we met with representatives of the Mayor of Vratsa to outline a William Meredith Festival in the Arts they wish to hold in the future. And the Sunday before we left, we gave an interview to the national radio program, "The Hour of Words."

Back in Washington, we were able to meet with the Bulgarian Ambassador Elena Poptodorova and schedule a fall event at the embassy which we plan to hold co-incidentally with the annual foundation board meeting. We were also able to attend my 45th class reunion at Georgetown and as a result will meet with the Special Collections librarian there this week where we will present recent publications and see how we may continue William's legacy at the Lauinger Library. At the LGBTQ Resource Center reception during the reunion we presented a copy of the film MARATHON and envision a screening and discussion of the film in the future.

I will be in Connecticut mid-June through August when I return to Bulgaria for a writer's conference sponsored by the Union of Bulgarian Writers and some time at their guest house in Varna. We hope to have a number of events in New London to celebrate this year and last year's Meredith Award for Poetry and entertain the prospect of visitors to Uncasville. Ah summer, a cumin in, and I am very happy to be returning home. As William says in a poem,

Summer is the change
we yearn the globe toward

And ourselves, perhaps, before "the planet tilts and cools." Wishing everyone the easier happiness of summer and its pleasures.

Richard

Richard and Nancy tour the Tour.
At The American Unviersity in Blagoevgrad
Chez Marc Albert
"GREEN-WINGED HORSE" Poetry by Lyubomir Levchev
Nancy Presents the Award
Dinner Hosted by Nicholay Petez, MP
 
 
 
Poetry Reading:
"The Hidden Treasure Poetry"
Sunday, September 16, 4 to 6 PM
SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT
Dear Friend,
The Courtyard Art Gallery in co-operation with the William Meredith Foundation and poet Joanie DiMartino cordially invite you to an afternoon delight: Poetry by fine local poets Gray Jacobik and Ravi Shankar.

Join the salon for a glass of wine, fine art, and poetic camaraderie at The Courtyard Gallery: Mystic's Hidden Treasure. The reading is free and open to the public, with sales of pastries to benefit future publications and readings in the Hidden Treasure Poetry Series.

Click on the Frame sysmbol for a full screen view ^.
WINE: Poetic Blend, Meredith Red.

"On March 2nd Warehouse Winery's No. 9 Red was formally awarded Minnesota's "Best Red" at the Minnesota Food and Wine Experience.

All profits from the sale of Meredith Red will help support the charitable and artistic projects of the William Meredith Foundation and Center for the Arts."
_________________________________________

September 16th 4:00-6:00

Courtyard Art Gallery
12 Water St.
Mystic, CT. 06355

(860) 536-5059

www.courtyardgallerymystic.com

RAVI SHANKAR
RAVI SHANKAR is the founding editor and Executive Director of Drunken Boat, one of the world's oldest electronic journals of the arts. He has published or edited seven books and chapbooks of poetry, including the 2010 National Poetry Review Prize winner, Deepening Groove. Along with Tina Chang and Nathalie Handal, he edited W.W. Norton's Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from Asia, the Middle East & Beyond, called "a beautiful achievement for world literature" by Nobel Laureate Nadine Gordimer. He has won a Pushcart Prize, been featured in The New York Times and the Chronicle of Higher Education, appeared as a commentator on the BBC and NPR, received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and the Connecticut Commission on the Arts, and has performed his work around the world. He is currently Chairman of the Connecticut Young Writers Trust, on the faculty of the first international MFA Program at City University of Hong Kong and an Associate Professor of English at CCSU.

CROSSING

Between forest and field, a threshold
like stepping from a cathedral into the street-
the quality of air alters, an eclipse lifts,
boundlessness opens, earth itself retextured
into weeds where woods once were.

Even [planes of motions shift from vertical
navigation of horizontal quiescence:
there's a standing invitation to lie back
as sky's unpredictable theater proceeds.

Suspended in this ephemeral moment
after leaving a forest, before entering
a field, the nature of reality is revealed.

Visit his website for more poetry:
http://www.drunkenboat.com/

Gray Jacobik
Gray Jacobik's collections include Brave Disguises (AWP Poetry Prize, Pittsburgh UP 2002), The Surface of Last Scattering (X. J. Kennedy Prize, Texas Review Press, 1999), The Double Task (Juniper Prize, UMASS Press, 1998), and a memoir-in-verse, Little Boy Blue (CavanKerryPress, 2011). Gray holds a Ph.D. in British and American Literature from Brandeis University and is a professor emeritus having retired from Eastern Connecticut State University. For almost three decades, Gray's poems have received prizes and been published widely.

She is a painter as well as a poet. Her paintings can be viewed at: http://grayjacobikartist.com/

Gray's poems, books, information about readings and other aspects of her career as a poet can be found at her poetry website: http://grayjacobik.com/

The 750 Hands

Mar de lagrimas (Sea of Tears)

Osvoldo Yero

Each is cast in porcelain, fired, glazed a shade
of blue or greenish-blue, some left hands,
but mostly right, and each is the hand
of a Cuban artist. Some left during
the great flight of the mid-Sixties
and the lesser flights of the Seventies
and Eighties. And some, forced to work
in mines and canefields, stayed in their
homeland. The hands hang a dozen deep,
a great wave on a long wall, each turned
slightly, thumb up, palm exposed.
From the side we see fingernails,
knuckles, knotted ridges of arteries,
scars of accidents and toil. Inert and cold,
signaling from stony depths, disembodied
yet over-arching, as if each lived more
in the sky than in the flesh, more
in the sea than on the shore; the hand
of its people, the sky and sea that holds Cuba.
Each man or woman kept a hand in plaster
long enough to form a mold, each mold
received the poured clay, the glaze, the fire,
filling the void of absence with existence--

I lived through sorrowful times and made art
with this hand. Nothing can stop
a hand from finding whatever it needs.
Nothing can stop the maker.

Michael Linnard
Little Red Tree Publishing, LLC

635 Ocean Avenue,
New London, CT 06320

Tel: 860 444 0082
Fax:860 440 2569

Email: michael.linnard@littleredtree.com

Website: www.littleredtree.com

Summer Flicker: MARATHON to screen at two venues at summer's end. Once again, what has become a contemporary classic will be available for audiences here in New London and in Minneapolis this August. The foundation has partnered with the OUT Twin Cities Film Festival for a special fund-raiser at the Crooked Pint Ale House this August 14th.And a special repeat performance will take place August 10th at the Provenence Center here in New London. Good food, good friends, good
poetry, good wine. Shall we say a good evening all the way around?

Please visit the OUT website for more information on their activities and the Provenance Center as well. And if you aren't familiar with the film, here is a five star review we hope will entice you to join us.
See you at the movies!
August 10, Friday:
August 14, Tuesday:

April 5, Thursday:

Screening of MARATHON at Lynn University as an outreach event for the Palm Beach Poetry Festival:
http://palmbeachpoetryfestival.org/news/#Marathon

 

April 13, Friday:

Publication of a French/English collection of William's poetry (CROSSING OVER) with an exhibition of the serigraphs accompanying the poems by Sooky Maniquant will take Place on April 13th at the Von Schlippe Gallery, Avery Point Campus, University of Connecticut, Groton, CT. .

Photography by David Madasci

April 22, Sunday:

Poetry reading from CROSSING OVER in celebration of William Merediths poetry and the foundation established to continue his legacy at RJ Julia Bookstore in Madison, CT. at 2:30.
Click here for Directions.

April 25, Wednesday:

Screening of MARATHON at the Groton Public Library April 25th.

Please join us on April 25 at 7:00 p.m., as we celebrate National Poetry Month with Marathon, a film with local connections featuring familiar settings and faces. Richard Harteis, the filmmaker and one of the central characters, will be present to introduce the film and answer your questions.

Marathon explores the relationship between Richard Harteis and William Meredith, a former Poet Laureate and winner of every major American award for poetry including the 1988 Pulitzer Prize. In the 17th year of their friendship, William sustained a debilitating stroke. Richard chose to stand by his partner, fighting for the right to care for him, despite the inevitable restrictions on his own life, and against the wishes of William's family. Though the path they chose is not an easy one, their love and compassion see them through days of illness, therapy, and healing. The power to overcome illness with dignity becomes a lesson in physical and spiritual endurance.

The film was an official selection in several festivals and the winner of the several awards at the New York International Film Festival.

Contact:
Betty Anne Reiter
Director
Groton Public Library
52 Newtown Road
Groton, CT 06340

860.441.6750
breiter@town.groton.ct.us

 

Selected for more than 20 national and international film festivals,
winning awards in N.Y, Los Angeles, Mexico City, and Las Vegas.

April 29, Sunday:

Publication of the first William Meredith Award for Poetry: I HEAR ALWAYS THE DOGS ON THE HOSPITAL ROOF, New and Collected Poems by David Fisher. Launching will take place at the Courtyard Gallery in Mystic on April 29th.

Cover art by Rita Dawley
Good News! POETIC BLEND WILLIAM MEREDITH RED WINE
Now available for purchase on-line

All net profits from the sale of Poetic Blend, William Meredith Red support the charitable and artistic projects of the William Meredith Foundation and Center for the Arts. On March 2nd Warehouse Winery’s No. 9 Red was formally awarded Minnesota’s " Best Red at the Minnesota Food and Wine Experience. This award-winning wine is being released under the name "Poetic Blend, Meredith Red." All net profits from the sale of Meredith Red will help support the charitable and artistic projects of the William Meredith Foundation and Center for the Arts.

Rich, ripe, full-bodied red wine; deep, dark berry flavors; bold statement; oak nuance; vanilla tones; long finish, no filtration.

CABERNET SAUVIGNON 45%
PETITE SIRAH 30%
FRONTENAC 20%
CABERNET FRANC 5%

Now available on-line!

POETIC BLEND: WILLIAM MEREDITH RED NOW AVAILABLE ON LINE!
To order Poetic Blend: William Meredith Red -- click here or please visit:

http://warehousewinery.myshopify.com/products/poetic-blend-william-meredith-red

 

PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Wednesday 7 March 2011
CONTACT:
Proprietor (Winery): BILLY SMITH, (612)867-8998, billy@warehousewinery.com Marketing Specialist (Winery): SAM HANKEY, (952)201-0678, sam@warehousewinery.com
Director (Foundation): RICHARD HARTEIS, marathonfilm@gmail.com

MINNESOTA'S WAREHOUSE WINERY ANNOUNCES PARTNERSHIP WITH THE WILLIAM MEREDITH FOUNDATION AND ARTS CENTER ON RELEASE OF "MINNESOTA'S BEST RED."

Warehouse Winery LLC, is inviting writers, reporters, and press advocates to celebrate the recent awarding of "Minnesota's Best Red" and "Minnesota's Best White" by the Minnesota Food and Wine Experience to our new line of wines; and to commemorate a new partnership with The William Meredith Foundation on the release of "Poetic Blend, Meredith Red" - "Minnesota's Best Red." Press parties are invited, at convenience, to explore our wine making haven, enjoy free wine tastings and a complementary tour of our facilities hosted by our award winning winemaker Billy Smith and his staff (Contact Sam Hankey [above] to arrange a date and time). Warehouse Winery is located at 6415 Cambridge Street, Minneapolis, MN 55426.

The Winery is open from 8am-4pm, Monday - Friday. Arrangements outside of working hours are acceptable. We invite you also to visit our website: www.warehousewinery.com.

Warehouse Winery, LLC began as a hobby for Wayzata native Billy Smith, but evolved rapidly when local consumers noticed his natural ability for winemaking. Billy has put countless hours into first refining winemaking methods, hand picking his production and promotion crew, creating promotional materials, investing in new equipment and eventually turning what began as a passion project into a full blown commercial winery. Although the popularity of Warehouse Wines has exploded in the last few years, the winery itself still retains its quaint, cozy style and remains a beautiful, comfortable, intimate and exciting venue.

On March 2nd Warehouse Winery's No. 9 Red was formally awarded "Minnesota's Best Red" at the Minnesota Food and Wine Experience. In true charitable spirit Smith teams up with Richard Harteis (contact above), director of the William Meredith Foundation and Arts Center, in its release under the name "Poetic Blend, Meredith Red".

Billy Smith and Richard Harteis are available for phone or in person interviews and our facilities are available for personal tours. Please contact sam@warehousewinery.com or call Sam at (952) 201-0678 to set up a time that is convenient.
MARATHON WINS IN LAS VEGAS

As for news, I am happy to say announce that our film MARATHON has been awarded a special jury prize for "Excellence in Filmaking - Narrative Feature" at the Anthem Film Festival final banquet July 16th at Bally's Hotel in Las Vegas. The Anthem Festival is part of Freedom Fest, a gathering of 3,000 Libertarians from all walks of life to discuss business, politics and the arts. Films demonstrating self reliance and personal courage were selected, certainly qualities William demonstrated his entire lifetime, but especially with the challenges of ageing. We were able to present his poetry at the convention center book store, and describe the foundations work at various functions and to friends such as my old college roomate, Brian Greenspun who publishes the Las Vegas Sun. Speakers included Steve Forbes, Juan Williams, Senator Paul, and Doug Casey among others. Dr. Joseph Stauffer kindly sponsored travel to conference and as well as Mr. and Mrs. John Brennan.

Another festival, The Gig Harbor Film Festival has invited us to Washington state this October 14-16th, and my hometown, York Pa. has invited us to the Prometheus Film Festival on August 19th, the day afer my 65th (gulp!) birthday. I will be in York with friends and family to celebrate the film and commiserate on the anniversary. And just before the York festival, we have been accepted as an official selection in the Columbia Gorge Film Festival in Vancouver, Washington. Our great hope is to schedule more theatrical releases of MARATHON in venues such at the University of Ohio where it showed recently as well as the Downtown Bocca Festival this past spring.

Upcoming festivals include:

The Columbia Gorge Film Festival, takes place in Vancover, WA August 10-14, 2011.

The Prometheus Festival, York, PA August 19-21, 2011.

The Gig Harbor Festival,Washington State, October 13-16, 2011.

 
Marathon the movie  
2011 Anthem Film Festival
Special Jury Prize Trophy
for a Narrative Feature

Letter from the President

Dear Friends,

Hello again, here at Riverrun where summer is a rollin' in. The stand of Japanese maples we planted last year has done well despite the deer's appetite for the small delicious red leaves. The lawn mower has been fixed and "the field tilting always toward day" has been given a haircut. William's longtime friend, John Hracyk stopped by this week to present us with the gift of a Chinese sculpture from his collection, a green ceramic dog to guard against evil spirts we have named Lee Chen. I've changed the O-rings in the leaky faucet and replaced the window the storms blew in this winter. Two long-haired princes come from New York soon to put a stainless steel liner in the chimney. Always something with a house.... But we are a state landmark now, and we need to attend to the tired beauty of the place as best as possible. My great hope is that one day the foundation will take ownership of the house and continue its spirit in perpetuity.

John Hracyk
Planting Trees
New Trees
 
Richard Harteis with mascot
 
Richard Harteis
 
   
  Some years ago, the Mystic Seaport produced a really beautiful, leather-bound collection of William's WWII poems entitled, THE WRECK OF THE THRESHER. It includes wonderful archival photos from the Navy and contains a journal section of lined, numbered, pages to record a readers thoughts. The seaport has graciously contributed a large number of copies of this book to the foundation. It will be a great way to keep William's work available, his voice alive among us. We are working with board member, Johnes Ruta to establish a Foundation Book Store where this and other books will be available. (Johnes has also scheduled an art exhibition at the New Haven Free Public Library, where he is curator, for Deborah Curtis. The Foundation-sponsored exhibition will open October 14 and run through November. Details to follow.) We plan to give The Wreck of the Thresher to participants in the forthcoming William Meredith Poetry Festival as well as to friends of the foundation. We await word from Connecticut College who we have invited to sponsor the festival during National Poetry Month, April 2012. The English Department has reviewed the project and finds it an "excellent idea," so we are keeping our fingers crossed.



 
 

NEW PROJECTS


Finally, we are in the process of publishing David Fisher's Collected Poems this fall with Little Red Tree Publishing House of New London. David's work will be the first in the William Meredith Poetry Award as part of the Poetry Festival. A second volume will follow, that of Florida Poet Laureate, Edmond Skellings. Ed was a longtime friend of William's. Diane Newman has worked with Ed over the years as his colleague and editor. She has worked for years as program administrator and most recently as Archive Manager at Evans College. We plan to welcome Diane as a Meredith fellow for a residency next summer to begin the digitization of William's archive and organization of his papers at the library at Riverrun.

I leave you with three poems, one a sort of "objet trouve" from a walk to the river, and two from the poets we have selected to inaugurate The William Meredith Poetry Award coming soon from Little Red Tree. Recently too, I came across a YouTube posting of William reading his poem "Crossing Over." The epigraph to the poem is from Uncle Tom's Cabin. How this poem was published with the photo from his youth I have no idea. But the more often William speaks to us from this internet aethers, all the better, say I. One evening I was thinking of him and for some reason pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and there was a picture of William and Daisy. Disconcerting and lovely.... Enjoy the pleasures of summer.

Richard

Richard Harteis
President, The William Meredith Foundation



<>
 
  Miniature

To be sure it hadn't been stolen
from its winter bed beside the barn
I walked to the point as a last resort
in search of the missing kayak.
Early summer had thrown a green
caftan over her as she slept, another
black mark for the navy boy who took her
dancing and didn't bring her home.
The water was dark as onyx,
a lone swan bobbed for grass
just off shore, the horizon divided
into blue and green - irresistible.
Not as deft as in earlier days,
I slipped into her like an old lover
and we set out together in silence
the water singing to us as we cut
the swells of a passing jetski -
a girl and boy, two boys?
holding tight as they zipped up river.
Two dragonflies in media res.
Peace on careless sailors, speed daemons.
To everything there is a season. A time to
drift, to be alone, neither sad nor happy
like the swan gliding away as I return.
I lift her ashore, and an impatient
stow away jumps from the kayak
and scurries into the bushes. A sweet,
dark-eyed mouse, a little grace note
from the universe to end the simple
song of a summer afternoon.

-Richard Harteis

 
 

The Lost Airman

I can't fly any more because of heart troubles.
One valve is fluttering in the bloodwind. The whole
Hangar suffers from a long neglect. And I say
Nothing is like the sweet quiet of a midwest dawn.
You wet your feet and the bottoms of your blue
Overalls with dewshine from the morning, and
Have time for a slow coffee and a slow read
Of the old happenings of the world's yesterday.
And after the long yawn of the huge barn doors, arms
Stretch out in the sun's light like wings. One can
Drum a hand's fingers on the lacquer fabric, typing
Nothing anyone else will read or understand.
And after the sputter and the runup, after the roll,
The lift, the throttle back to cruise, there is a little
Minute to look down at fog wisp and mist puff.
It is a real wonder to look level at heaven.
And I don't know why I woke thinking of the white
Sparrow skeleton I saw once stuck in the black roof tar,
But I can't fly any more because of my heart's troubles.
And it is hard to remember, the odor of oil on the clover.

-Edmund Skellings

 

The Bear

Thrown from the boxcar of the train, the bear
rolls over and over. He sits up
rubbing his nose. This must be
some mistake,
there is no audience here.
He shambles off through the woods.
The forest is veined with trails,
he does not know which to follow.
The wind is rising, maple leaves turn up
their silver undersides in agony, there is a
smell in the air, and the lightening strikes.
He climbs a tree to escape. The rain
pours down, the bear is blue as a gall.
There is not much to eat
in the forest, only berries,
and some small delicious animals
that live in a mound and bite your nose.
The bear moves sideways through a broom-straw field.
He sees the hunters from the corner of his eye
and is sure they have come to take him back.
To welcome them , (though there is no calliope)
he does his somersaults, and juggles
a fallen log, and something
tears through his shoulder,
he shambles away in the forest and cries.
Do they not know who he is?
After a while, he learns to fish, to find
the deep pool and wait for the silver trout.
He learns to keep his paw up for spiderwebs.
There is only one large animal, with trees
on its head, that he can not scare.
At last he is content to be
alone in the forest,
though sometimes he finds a clearing
and solemnly does tricks,
though no one sees.

-David Fisher

 
Listening to Light and Color:
Water Works by Deborah Curtis and Sooky Maniquant

Artists' Reception : Saturday, October 29, 2011, 2:00 to 4:00 PM

The New Haven Free Public Library Gallery
133 Elm Street (Lower Level) New Haven, CT 06510

Guest Curator: Poet Richard Harteis
Sponsored by the William Meredith Foundation


Deborah Curtis: "Pathway to the Water - Harkness" 14” x 18” Pastel on Pastel board

The William Meredith Foundation and the Azoth Gallery present a two-person exhibit of artworks by Connecticut artist Deborah Curtis and French artist Sooky Maniquant at the New Haven Public Library Gallery.

****************************************************************
Deborah Curtis
Deborah Curtis has combined her interests in science, technology and the visual arts. She graduated from Northeastern University with a Bachelor of Science in Fine Arts through a joint program at The Art Institute of Boston. She was employed at Retina Associates in Boston for more than eight years as an ophthalmic photographer and associate media manager. "Being employed in medical and defense media/photography has helped me create my fine art and photographs. My Professional Medical Photography skills delegate how I produce “art” to market."

"My palette can be organic, using limited two/three primary/complimentary color choices," writes Deborah. "I also explore the primary hues and only blend its compliment for shadows and rendering edges giving the art piece a dreamy like effect not normally found in reality. In either depiction, I like to simplify my art to its baseline and work outward.


Deborah Curtis: "Around the Misty Bend - Harkness" 32" x 42" oil on linen canvas

"I love using technology to capture what I find unusual and beautiful, which expedites the exploratory process for my creative statements. I enjoy nature as an infinite timeless array of light reflected upon mass, air and liquid igniting emotion through ones mind, body and spirit. Art to me is the sum expression of passion combining all these things in harmony, a marriage between the study of life and the media of technology. Most of her current works are in series.

Since the 1980s, Deborah has exhibited her art work in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. She has painted en plein air, and has often attracted media attention while rendering exteriors of Connecticut resorts, inns and sunsets along the Connecticut and Rhode Island shorelines. Deborah has taught a myriad of workshops: abstract, figures, animal portraits in pastels and mixed media collage in New London at Granite Street Gallery, Studio 33, and art classes in Norwich at Art Works, which featured a retrospective of her works in 2010. In 2009, she had a solo show of 18 portraits of women. She also teaches in private homes/studios and is commissioned for photography and art work.


Deborah Curtis: “Contiguous Wave” – Harkness 11” x 14” Oil on linen canvas

Commentary by Richard Harteis:

In a remarkable series of dramatic monologs entitled HAZARD THE PAINTER, the poet William Meredith traces the life of his "imaginary playmate," an artist saddled with all the accouterments of middle class life in America: house, car, wife, in-laws, children, and cat. In one poem, Hazard notes,


"The cat is taking notes against
his own household. He watches.
Hazard would like once to see
things with the cat’s eyes, flat.

It seems to me in Deborah Curtis’ paintings that she has mastered the vision of Hazard’s cat. Like the canvases of Milton Avery, they are stripped of all unnecessary detail, landscapes reduced their purest essence, Platonic images if you wish, of ocean-ness, of what it really means to walk the beach alone on a summer’s day. While the work is clearly representational, it focuses on color relations and is not overly concerned with creating the illusion of depth as is most conventional painting. Like Avery or Matisse, such stripping away takes courage for one living in what is perhaps the country’s foremost bastion of landscape painters. The Lyme tradition runs deep as a deer tick after gardening in southeastern Connecticut. If you want photo realism or perfect impressionist landscapes, this is the place to shop. Some may find her work radical for being too abstract; some lovers of Abstract Expressionism may find it too representational. What is clear is that Curtis has developed her own unique voice which is always the mark of a serious poet or artist. In another HAZARD poem, the painter spends an afternoon skydiving and reflects:

The colors of autumn
are becoming audible through the haze.
It does not matter that the great masters
could see this without flight, while
dull Hazard must be taken up and dropped.
He see it.

Curtis sees it too, and "hears" color like a master which is why her work sings to us so beautifully.

For a painter, I would image water would be one of the most difficult subjects to capture, even more than light, or perhaps because of it. Light captured in a drop of water, or an ice crystal, or a breaking wave is as evanescent as a summer’s breeze. And natural light is central to her painting, which is why Ms. Curtis works so often en plein air. This harmony of light and color, particularly as it applies to water and seascape marks her as one of the regions finest new talents whose work we celebrate. If only Hazard and William were here today to enjoy it with us.

Sooky Maniquant

Sooky Maniquant was born in Vietnam in 1934 and brought up in the South Pacific. She studied in Paris, and traveled through the world, using every occasion to deepen her knowledge of Océanian, European, African, Asiatic, and most particularly of Japanese civilizations. Very early, she makes the choice to live, more often as not, on the Luberon, her “sacred mountain”, where she feels nearer to the “vivid forces” of Nature.

Maniquant first met William Meredith in Paris and Avignon when William was invited to participate in the Avignon festival. In the piece "After William Meredith," the Meredith poems are presented in both his original English and a French translation, juxtaposing the text with images rendered by Sooky Maniquant. "After William Meredith" places artwork and poems side by side, allowing the viewer to experience Meredith's work from two different perspectives: Meredith's verses and Maniquant's striking visual interpretations:


In 2002: Exposition "round in water, magic Circles" were variations on 20 poems of William Meredith and Richard Harteis at the European Center of Poetry of Avignon. In 2006 at the Lyman Allyn Museum in New London CT : "AFTER WILLIAM MEREDITH" Spiral Forces were graphic connivances of Sooky Maniquant on poems by W.Meredith and R.Harteis.


"It is the universe seized in its innermost transformation which is revealed, but remains surprising, by static as these chalk cliffs, boiling under the midday sun, terrorized by the heat and silence, dully crackling on the limit of exploding, a stilled furnace overflowing onto the whole space of canvas in a thick wave…. World in distress, but held back by the artist’s hand on the brim of emptiness…Solidified by the appearance, sealed into its vibrations, calm and taut as a mummified monster of a dormant weapon.” ~Paul-Louis Rossi


Sooky Maniquant "Air Heroes" 24" x 36" silkscreen print on paper

“Sooky Maniquant’s main preoccupation is to find in the mysterious existence of each one’s interior life (thing or being), and to translate this magic by her work, therefore suggesting, particularly for the works of 1963-1969, incomparable energy of volcanoes, beyond the “canvas” of the painted artwork. But reality complicates itself with the parallax “time-space” thus “perpetual movement” of which the artist will approach the research of expression more precisely in her collages from 1969. 1974, first tapestry: this material, treated in a very personal way, with its contours conceived in the mass of the work, enables her to pursue further in her researches: the continuity of the material, the heat and sphere of the surface, the vibrations of colours where the blacks and whites quiver, continue to express anxiety faced with the mystery of life. ~Henry Galy-Carles


Sooky Maniquant "In the Middle of a Long Friendship" 24" x 36" silkscreen print on paper

"But," Richard Harteis writes, "the mystery of life is also the one of death, of suffering, of horror, and for Sooky is an obsession. As from 1994 she often combines this with poetry, in opposition to wars. She puts together stucco, which proclaims her despair, in long kit form installations. In 2001, she returned to photography as a means of expression."

Sooky Maniquant "Tiger at the Water" 24" x 36" silkscreen print on paper

****************************************************************
E xhibition: October 14 - November 30, 2011
****************************************************************

CLICK HERE FOR DIRECTIONS

Gallery Hours:
Monday: 12 - 8 pm
Tuesday - Thursday: 10 am - 8 pm
Friday: 10 - 5 pm
Saturday: 10 am - 5 pm
Sunday: closed

For more information, please contact:
Gallery Curator: Johnes Ruta (203) 387-4933 azothgallery@comcast.net
http://azothgallery.com/gallery.htm

2011 Film Festivals for Marathon

ACCEPTED
The Columbia Gorge Film Festival, Vancover, WA
August 10 to 14, 2011.

ACCEPTED
The Prometheus Festival, York, PA
August 19 to 21, 2011.

ACCEPTED
The Clearwater Film and Music Festival, Florida,
September 22 to 25, 2011.

ACCEPTED
The Gig Harbor Festival, Washington State,
October 13 to 16, 2011.

ACCEPTED
Southern Appalachian International Film Festival
October 26 to November 4, 2011.
DICK ALLEN – CT POET LAUREATE
 
I've always liked a very simple definition of poetry as "language measured and supercharged," for it seems to combine poetry's two basic elements: some kind of rhythm and poetry's great intensity. For me, it's the sound of poetry that most often initiates a poem... I love how lines and phrases can be held in the memory... I like
how poetry can "leap" so suddenly from here to there... I love the simile, the analogy, the allusions, the secret codes, and how narrative and meditative poetry can move so rapidly and beautifully from aspect to aspect, time to time, person to person.
I love poetry's passion. And I love the craft of poetry....
___________________________________________________________________
 

Dick Allen, one of America's leading poets, is preeminent among poets who encourage new sensibilities in poetry and who have brought to contemporary
poetry a large array of subjects other than the "self" and styles other than confessional free verse.

A masterful poet of wide reputation, Allen has published in the nation's premier journals includingPoetry, the New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, Hudson Review, New Republic, and New Criterion, as well as in scores of national anthologies. He has published seven poetry collections and won numerous awards including a Pushcart Prize, the Robert Frost prize, fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and Ingram Merrill Poetry Foundation, and six inclusions in The Best American Poetry annual volumes. Allen's most recent collection, Present Vanishing: Poems (Sarabande Books), received the 2009 Connecticut Book Award for Poetry.

An acclaimed public speaker and poetry reader, Allen has led poetry workshops
and seminars and served as a judge for various competitions and selection committees in Connecticut (including Poetry Out Loud State Finals in 2007 and a POL workshop for teachers in 2009) and at the national level.

His poems have been featured on Poetry Daily and Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac and in Ted Kooser's American Life in Poetry, as well as recently on the national websites of Tricycle, where he was a guest poet writing on Zen Buddhism and poetry, and on the Smartish Pace poetry website.

Prior to his early retirement, Allen was Charles A. Dana Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at the University of Bridgeport (UB) where he taught
from 1968 to 2001. During his distinguished teaching career, he was highly
regarded and well-loved by students of all ages - particularly for his generosity of spirit and ability to mentor and nurture both beginning and accomplished poets. While at UB, he directed the University's Visiting Writers Series (open to the general public) which brought fifty of the nation's leading poets to Connecticut, and created and taught a wide range of courses, including international poetry and fiction, to a diverse student body.

THE SELFISHNESS OF THE POETRY READER

Sometimes I think I'm the only man in America
who reads poems
and who walks at night in the suburbs,
calling the moon names.
And I'm certain I'm the single man who owns
a house with bookshelves,
who drives to work without a CD player,
taking the long way, by the ocean breakers.
No one else, in all America,
quotes William Meredith verbatim,
cites Lowell over ham and eggs, and Levertov;
keeps Antiworlds and Ariel beside his bed.
Sometimes I think no other man alive
is changed by poetry, has fought
as utterly as I have over "Sunday Morning"
and vowed to love those difficult as Pound.
No one else has seen a luna moth
flutter over Iowa, or watched
a woman's hand lift rainbow trout from water,
and snow fall onto Minnesota farms.
This country wide, I'm the only man
who spends his money recklessly on thin
volumes unreviewed, enjoys
the long appraising look of check-out girls.
How could another in America know why
the laundry from a window laughs,
and how plums taste, and what an auto wreck
feels like--and craft?
I think that I'm the only man who speaks
of fur and limestone in one clotted breath;
for whom Anne Sexton plunged in Grimm; who can't
stop quoting haikus at some weekend guest.
The only man, in all America, who feeds
on something darker than his politics,
who writes in margins and who earmarks pages--
in all America, I am the only man.

-Dick Allen

Visit his website for more poetry:
http://home.earthlink.net/~rallen285/

RICHARD HARTEIS
Since 2007, Richard Harteis has worked as the president of the William Meredith Foundation, www.WilliamMeredithFoundation.org) a 501.c3 organization dedicated to preserving the legacy of the late US Poet Laureate, who was his partner of 36 years.

Mr.Harteis served for two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Tunisia, worked as a physician assistant in North Africa and Asia and spent a Fulbright year as writer-in-residence at the American University in Bulgaria. For his work in the culture, he was accorded Bulgarian citizenship by decree of the President and Parliament in 1996.

Mr.Harteis has taught literature and creative writing at a number of institutions over the years including The Catholic University of America, Creighton University, Mt. Vernon College, and Connecticut College. For two years he directed the PEN Syndicated Fiction Project and created the NPR radio program THE SOUND OF WRITING serving as writer/director and host. He has received honors and awards for his work including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the D.C. Commission on the Arts, and the Ford Foundation.

He is the author of ten books of poetry and prose most recently the novel, SAPPHIRE DAWN,
a new and selected poems, PROVENCE, and a memoir first published by W.W. Norton in 1989 entitled MARATHON to critical acclaim (and re-issued through: www.Vivisphere.com).

His series of elegiac lyrics, THE REVENANT was published by Little Red Tree Publishing (www.littleredtree.com) in the summer of 2010. In 2008 he produced a 35 mm, 90-minute adaptation of MARATHON (www.marathonthemovie.com), which won Best Screenplay and Best Cinematography in the 2009 New York International Film Festival as well as the Bronze Palm at the 2010 Mexico International Film Festival.

He is currently working with colleagues on a new film project, COMES LOVE which is set in New York and Hollywood between the great wars. He lives in West Palm Beach, Florida and Uncasville, Connecticut where his home, "Riverrun," was added to the Connecticut Registry of Historic Places in 2007 and now serves as the William Meredith Center for the Arts. (www.WilliamMeredithFoundation.org)

THE REVENANT

Daisy stretches herself out like a mermaid on the kitchen floor.
She throws her head back and wails for no apparent reason.
It could be comic:
Her luxurious cocker ears fall in a chocolate cascade
like the Sun King's wig or a Dutch Burgomaster.
Why so inconsolable, Daisy?
The cookie jar is out of view;
There is no toy you can not reach,
no siren sounds that I can hear.
I have not packed my bags to leave you.
"They look at something we can't look at
yet," you said once of the ghosts of the house,
"averting their sad glance when we're clumsy with
one another."
Are you playing with us now dear ghost, tossing
an unseen ball to Daisy, trying to cheer us up a bit?
Does she see you through her clouded cataracts, the
way you come to me at the edge of sleep?

Do not tease us please, my dear; Come in full,
if apparition. You've left us lonely beyond measure,
turned Daisy to a banshee, and my poor brain again a tree
of frantic birds.

Richard Harteis

Rececnt and Past Film Festivals for Marathon

ACCEPTED
Delray Beach Film Festival
6th Annual from April 11 to April 17, 2011

ACCEPTED
International Film Festival Thailand 
2 Annual from July 13, 2010 to July 17, 2010

ACCEPTED
International Film Festival Egypt
4 Annual from April 04, 2010 to April 08, 2010

ACCEPTED
International Film Festival South Africa
4 Annual from November 01, 2010 to November 05, 2010

ACCEPTED
Swansea Bay Film Festival
5 Annual from May 08, 2010 to May 16, 2010

ACCEPTED
International Film Festival Ireland
3 Annual from September 04, 2010 to September 11, 2010

ACCEPTED
Treasure Coast International Film Festival
3 Annual from February 18, 2010 to February 21, 2010


WINNER - BRONZE PALM AWARD
Mexico International Film Festival
4 Annual from May 28, 2010 to May 30, 2010
Notify date: 01-Apr-2010


ACCEPTED
Beijing International Movie Festival
4 Annual from June 25, 2010 to July 06, 2010
Notify date: 21-Apr-2010


 


Contact:

Foundation Director:
Richard Harteis
Tel. (860) 961-5138
Suite 126, 300 Brandegee Av. Groton, CT 06340
marathonfilm@gmail.com

www.WilliamMeredithFoundation.org and www.Poets-Choice.com

s