Celebration of National Poetry Month

The Cape Cod Poetry Group’s annual Celebration of National Poetry Month

Saturday, April 8, 2017

1:00 – 3:00 pm

Wellfleet Library

55 W. Main Street

Wellfleet, Ma

Featured Performers

 Poets:

Keith Althaus, Susan Berlin, Laura Foley

Musicians:

Duo Ellen Watters Sullivan on cello Claudia Wellington on vocals & guitar.

Solo piano by Mark Borgmann.

Hosted by CCPG founder and poet, Barry Hellman.

Free admission and refreshments.

Sponsored by

Friends of the Wellfleet Library

Wellfleet Cultural Council

 and

The Massachusetts Cultural Council

“This program is supported in part by a grant from the Wellfleet Cultural Council, a local agency which is supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency.”

 About the performers:

Keith Althaus is the author of three books of poetry, Rival Heavens (Provincetown Arts Press, 1993), Ladder of Hours (Ausable Press, 2005), and Cold Storage (Off the Grid Press, 2016)- a collection of his work over 4 decades. His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The American Poetry Review, Poetry, Agni, Drunken Boat, The Yale Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and numerous other magazines, and in American Life in Poetry and Poetry Daily. His honors include a 1969 Fellowship at The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, a Pushcart Prize, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, and a grant from the Massachusetts Council for the Arts. He has worked at many jobs, including carpentry, tree planting, loft renovation, and clerical work, and now runs a gallery with his wife, the artist Susan Baker, in North Truro, Massachusetts. He is on the Writing Committee of the Fine Arts Work Center , and conducts poetry workshops at Castle Hill Center for The Arts in Truro.

Susan Berlin’s poems have appeared in Alaska Quarterly, Asheville Poetry Review, Atlanta Review, Cape Cod Poetry Review, Georgetown Review, Harvard Review, Iodine Poetry Review, Mudfish, Naugatuck River Review, Oberon and Ploughshares, among many others.  A multiple Pushcart Prize nominee and twice a Finalist for the National Poetry Series, she was awarded 1st Prize in the Galway Kinnell Poetry Contest from the Rhode Island Council on the Arts and has received an International Publication Prize as well as an International Merit Award from Atlanta Review.  Her book, The Same Amount of Ink, has just been published by Glass Lyre Press. She lives in Yarmouth Port, MA.

Laura Foley is the author of five poetry collections, including Joy Street, Syringa and Night Ringing. Her poem “Gratitude List” won the Common Good Books poetry contest and was read by Garrison Keillor on A Prairie Home Companion and on The Writer’s Almanac. She won the Joe Gouveia Outermost Poetry Contest, judged by Marge Piercy.

Ellen Watters Sullivan has played in orchestras, chamber groups, and as a soloist throughout the U.S. and internationally.  She studied with Rudolph Kratina, an Austrian cellist who had studied with Strauss. Later she studied at the N.E. Conservatory, University of Massachusetts-Boston,  Longy School of Music and the Boston Conservatory.  She has also studied with members of the Atlanta Symphony, the Boston Symphony and Boston Chamber Music Society. Ellen was principal cellist of the Melrose Symphony, played in the Otter Trio, performed and conducted with the New England Women’s Symphony, and played free form jazz at the Friends of Great Black Music in Boston.

Claudia Wellington has a deep voice with a style that’s infused with folk, blues, gospel and jazz. Early influences were Bonnie Raitt, Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, Carole King, CSNY, the Allman Brothers and Bob Dylan. Playing with fellow musicians through high school culminated with opening for Dave Van Ronk just before graduating. After moving to Boston in the mid ‘70’s she continued to play in and around clubs in Somerville, Cambridge, and Boston. She gravitated more toward jazz in the 80’s and spent the early 80’s singing with guitarist (now the Cab Calloway band leader), Christopher Calloway Brooks in Boston area clubs and performed weekly in 1985 at the Club Café with pianist, David Sparr. She moved to France in 1986 and sang with the “Kangeroo Swing Orchestra” in clubs in Paris and the French Alps and performed as a headliner at the Beauvais Jazz Festival.

Mark Borgmann performed in Indiana during his college years, in and around metro Boston before moving to the New York City area, and currently can be heard regularly in Cape Cod’s finest venues. With formats ranging from singles to 22-piece big bands, Mark’s repertoire spans jazz, funk, blues, the Great American Songbook, theater and popular music.

Barry Hellman is a clinical psychologist whose poems have appeared in literary journals, anthologies, broadsides, playbills, and The King of Newark published by Finishing Line Press. He’s the founder of the Cape Cod Poetry Group, curates and hosts its Poetry & Music Series and group page on Facebook, and leads workshops on the art, craft, and performance of poetry. Barry is the Outer Cape Outreach Representative for Mass Poetry in Boston, publishes a Cape Cod Poetry Group page on CapeWomenOnline, and an advisor to WCAI’s ‘Poetry Sunday’. Previously, he co-curated and hosted the Poets Corner Poetry & Music Series at the Cultural Center of Cape Cod, hosted poetry, music, and poetry workshop events in the Chapel In The Pines Sunday Series, and founded and led a Writers Group at the Eastham Library.