West Tisbury Library to Host Two Award-Winning Poets

In today’s world of spoken word and experimental poetry, it is often hard for some who don’t consider themselves fans to look on a poetry reading as their ideal way to spend an evening. Similarly, finding ways to appeal to a larger audience has always been a challenge for poets. However, this Thursday’s reading will feature two poets who find themselves sitting comfortably between the traditional and the experimental and who have found fans among even the most skeptical.

GE Patterson is a poet, critic and translator whose poetic work includes the collection, To and From and his first book, Tug that won the Minnesota Book Award.  According to Patterson, his work has many levels of appeal. “My work may appeal to those interested in what critic Marjorie Perloff has called ‘the other tradition’ of exploratory and experimental poetics. But because I often write in traditional forms and explore themes of nature and family and spirituality, I've found that the work appeals to more than the experimentally minded reader.”

Patterson also has a strong spoken word following because of his experience in that scene and he attributes his wide range of readers to the fact that he is a member of several communities – racial and ethnic and regional.  “Many who follow poetry are keenly interested in how personal identity gets expressed and reflected in poetic writing,” said Patterson.

Patterson has been a featured guest at several universities, libraries, bookstores, bars and cafes, as well as places devoted to contemporary visual arts across the country. He currently lives and teaches in Minnesota and plans to read new and older work at the event on Thursday.

Samantha Barrow, also an award-winning poet, also pushes the envelope on the poet label. “ I tend to appeal more to people who don't think they like poetry, than to uber-serious poets. Or at least that used to be true.  I think I appeal to folks who are happy to have their boundaries pushed a little and who care about things a lot,” said Barrow.

Barrow who is a poet, performer and educator, divides her time between New York City and Martha’s Vineyard. “I was incubated here, “ said Barrow of the Island. “Sloshed about in the sea in utero. Lived here on and on ever since. My wife's business is here, my work is in NYC, so we split time.”

Barrow earned her MS in Narrative Medicine at Columbia University, where she was awarded a Distinguished Graduate Research Scholar Fellowship. She completed the Advanced Seminar at the International Trauma Studies Program in NYC to fortify her work writing with and advocating for survivors of sexual assault, and now teaches Narrative Medicine at the City College of New York.

She’s been known to ride her motorcycle around the country, sharing her poems in bars, universities, libraries, and cafes. She has received multiple grants from the Leeway Foundation to tour and to facilitate Sound/Body/Love/Poem; gently erotic poetry workshops for survivors of sexual abuse, and currently facilitates Moving Our Embodied Stories: Creative Resilience Workshops with survivors of Sexual Abuse with Saliha Bava, PhD.

She is the author of GRIT and tender membrane, Jelly (a chapbook,), and Chap (self published). Her poetry, prose, reviews and interviews have been published in The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Philadelphia City Paper, Off Our Backs, Avalon Magazine, The Ledge Magazine, Lesbian Nation, Feminist Review, and Edible Vineyard.

Coming to the Island this time, Barrow is looking forward to the reading because she will get to visit with other poets and friends she admires and also because, “It will give me a reason to evaluate - for better or worse – where I'm at with my work today.”

The Patterson/Barrow reading takes place at the on December 15^th at 5:30 pm. Refreshments will be served. The event is free and open to the public.