Event
Riverwood Poetry Series
Join us for this in-person reading! An open mic will precede the featured reader—one poem, one page.
Since we are always trying to perfect our open mic, this month we will draw 10 names from all those who sign up by 7 PM.
The series is also updating their contact list!
If you would like to receive email notifications of upcoming events, please leave your name and preferred email address at the book sales table.
The authors’ books will be available to buy for book signing & conversation, and beer, wine, soft drinks, and snacks will be available for purchase. Bring a friend! Free of charge. Ample parking available at Real Art Ways.
May’s Reader:
Matthew E. Henry
Matthew E. Henry (MEH) is the Boston-born author of the full length collections the Colored page (Sundress Publication, 2022) and The Third Renunciation (New York Quarterly Books, 2023), the chapbooks Teaching While Black (Main Street Rag, 2020) and Dust & Ashes (California Press, 2020), and the micro-chapbook have you heard the one about…? (Ghost City Press, 2023). He also has a collection forthcoming from Harbor Editions (said the Frog to the scorpion). MEH is editor-in-chief of The Weight Journal, an associate poetry editor at Pidgeonholes, an associate editor at Rise Up Review, and is the 2023 winner of the Solstice Literary Magazine Stephen Dunn Poetry Prize.
He received his MFA in poetry from Seattle Pacific University, an MA in theology (Andover Newton Theological School) and a PhD in education (Lesley University).
MEH is an educator whose career has found him teaching English, teacher education, philosophy, and sociology at the high school, college, and graduate levels. His writing shines a back-light on the bed of education, race, relationships, and religion. He’s been known to make some sad and angry people irrationally uncomfortable.
Randall Horton
Randall Horton, originally from Birmingham, Alabama, is the recipient of the Gwendolyn Books Poetry Award, the Bea Gonzalez Poetry Award, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Literature, the GLCA New Writers Award from Creative Nonfiction for Hook: A Memoir (2015), Poet-in-Residence at the Civil Right Corpse, and most recently a Right to Return Fellowship from the Soze Foundation, Horton is also a member of the band: Heroes Are Gang Leaders, a group whose unique blend of jazz, funk, hip hop, go-go, R&B, soul, classical, music, dramaturgy, and prose, continues the legacy of Amiri Baraka and received the American Book Award from Oral Literature. The University of Kentucky Press is the publisher of his latest poetry collection {#289-128}. His memoir Dead Weight: A Memoir in Essays was published by Northwestern University Press in Feb. 2022.
In addition, Horton has appeared on C-Span, NPR, CTNPR and countless journals, magazines and radio shows. He is the co-creator of Radical Reversal, a poetry/music band dedicated to challenging systemic injustice in the American legal system through the installation of recording studios and creative/performance spaces as well as programming in Dept. of Correction facilities in the United States. Horton is a Professor of English at the University of New Haven.
About Riverwood Poetry Series
The Riverwood Poetry Series, Inc. is a non-profit arts organization committed to the promotion and appreciation of poetry in Connecticut. RPS, Inc. is invested in providing entertaining and thought-provoking programming, while responding to the needs of our neighbors through community outreach and collaboration. From their Facebook page: “The Riverwood Poetry Series has innovated many programs since our inception, all of them free to the public. We provide entertaining and thought-provoking poetry in a relaxed atmosphere.”
