Message From The New England Poetry Club

Dear Friends,

As mentioned in the December newsletter, NEPC member Chandler Camerato is planning a Zoom marathon reading of Bernadette Mayer’s collection: Midwinter Day.

If you’d like to participate and read a section of the book, please contact Chandler at this new address: thismidwinterday@gmail.com

(NOTE, the previous address that was circulated does NOT work)

The reading will take place on December 22, 2022, beginning at 06:00 PM Eastern Time. All are invited to join us, whether you're reading or not!

Register in advance for the link: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZAodeirrTgtH9TeuE18018LaiPrm9Oy70vD

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.





More about Bernadette Mayer & Midwinter Day

Bernadette Mayer (May 12, 1945-November 22, 2022) was “an avant-garde writer associated with the New York School of poets. Born in Brooklyn, New York, Mayer had spent most of her life in New York City. Her collections of poetry include Midwinter Day (1982, 1999), A Bernadette Mayer Reader (1992), The Desire of Mothers to Please Others in Letters (1994), Another Smashed Pinecone (1998), Poetry State Forest (2008), and Works and Days (2016), which was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist.

Known for her innovative use of language, Mayer first won critical acclaim for the exhibit Memory, which combined photography and narration. Mayer took one roll of film shot each day during July 1971, arranging the photographs and text in what Village Voice critic A.D. Coleman described as “a unique and deeply exciting document.”

Mayer’s poetry often challenges poetic conventions by experimenting with form and stream-of-consciousness; readers have compared her to Gertrude Stein, Dadaist writers, and James Joyce. Poet Fanny Howe commented in the American Poetry Review on Midwinter Day, a book-length poem written during a single day in Lenox, Massachusetts: “In a language made up of idiom and lyricism, Mayer cancels the boundaries between prose and poetry, … Her search for patterns woven out of small actions confirms the notion that seeing what is is a radical human gesture.” [Excerpted from https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/bernadette-mayer]