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Lo Galluccio |
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Toni Bee |
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Peter Payack |
At 7pm
on Tuesday February 7th, at First Church Cambridge, 11 Garden Street,
the Hastings Room Reading Series will be holding a special event to
celebrate and remember the Cambridge Poet Populist program, which
supported a “Poet Populist” designated to engage the community
with the art of poetry. From 2007 to 2015 four Cambridge poets held
the honored position: Peter Payack (2007-2009), Jean-Dany Joachim
(2009-2011), Toni “Bee” Brooks (2011-2013) and Lo Galluccio
(2013-2015).
The
program, modeled in part on Seattle Washington’s Poet Populist
project, was initiated by City Councilor Brian Murphy in 2007 and
launched in the same year. The “Populist” idea differed from
other cities’ Poet Laureate programs in that the poet was not
appointed by the City but rather voted in by the community. The
Poetry Populist program was streamlined by Cambridge Arts in 2015
into the Poetry Ambassador program, which promotes seasonal poetry
events curated by different poets.
While
the Ambassador program continues to engage the public with the art
through public readings organized by talented area poets, the Poet
Populist program will be remembered for bringing Cambridge residents
in on the election and promotion of the four exceptional poets
mentioned above. These poets have been invited to the Hastings Room
Reading Series at First Church to read from their poetry and to
remember highlights of their tenure as the city’s leading voices in
poetry.
The
Hastings Room Reading Series, established in 2014 by Steven Brown and
Michael Steffen, has hosted many of the area’s leading poets,
including Martha Collins, David Ferry, Fred Marchant, Joan Houlihan,
Daniel Tobin, Marc Vincenz, David Blair, Doug Holder, Gloria Mindock
and Pulitzer Prize poet Franz Wright. The readings are free and open
to the public.
Please
come join us. Here are our readers, with a little information about
them.
Toni
“Bee” Brooks is a
writer, poet & photographer. Poet Populist of Cambridge from
2011-2013, and a Board Member at Cambridge Community Television, she
is a public speaker, event host, and a Teaching Artist specializing
in poetry workshops for teenagers and adults.
Lo
Galluccio, Poet
Populist from 2013 to 2015, is
also a memoirist and vocalist. Her published work includes a
chapbook, Hot Rain
(2004) from Ibbetson Street Press, a prose-poem memoir, Sarasota
VII (2010) published by
Cervena Barva Press and available at the Grolier bookstore. A second
chapbook, Terrible Baubles
(2012) was released by Cervena Barva with a CD of the same title –
a collaboration with pianist Eric Zinman and cellist Jane Wang.
Galluccio is a graduate of Harvard, and has studied at the Goodman
School of Drama and the Berklee School of Music.
Jean Dany Joachim,
Cambridge Poet Populist from 2009 to 2011, and the current Poet in
Residence at First Church in Cambridge, is also an author of short
stories and plays. He created the Many Voices Project, a series
of readings and follow-up poetry workshops, inspiring conversations
about race and equality. He has three published collection of poetry,
Crossroads / Chimenkwaze
(2013), Avec des Mots
(2014), and Quartier
(2016). He is the director of City Night Readings, a series
featuring diverse poetic talents, writers and artists. Jean Dany
teaches at Bunker Hill Community College.
Peter Payack
was the first Poet Populist of Cambridge from 2007 to 2009. He has
been published widely, including in The
Paris Review, Rolling Stone, The New York Times and
The Boston Globe.
Payack is also an inventor, notably of the world-renowned Stonehenge
Watch™, an infinitesimal replica of the megaliths at Stonehenge
inside of an old-fashioned pocket watch. He has taught at The Berklee
College of Music, University of Massachusetts Lowell and UMass
Online.
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