Princeton Makes, a Princeton-based artist cooperative, and Ragged Sky Press, a local publisher focused on poetry, hosts a Second Sunday Poetry Reading on Sunday, December 8, at 4 p.m. The reading takes place at the Princeton Makes store in the Princeton Shopping Center.
The December reading features music-themed poetry by Winifred Hughes and Lynn Levin. Their readings will be followed by an open mic available to up to 10 audience members who would like to read their original poetry.
Winifred Hughes is the author of “The Village of New Ghosts,” winner of the 2024 Henry Morgenthau III poetry award from Passager Books, as well as two chapbooks, “Frost Flowers” and “Nine-Bend Bridge.” Her poems have appeared in Poetry, Poetry Northwest, Atlanta Review, and International Poetry Review, among other journals. “The Scene Without” was overall poetry winner in the competition for the 2023 Fish Anthology, chosen by Billy Collins and published in Bantry, Ireland. She is a long-time member of U.S. 1 Poets’ Cooperative and former managing editor of U.S. 1 Worksheets.
A sample of her work follows.
Lynn Levin is a poet, writer, and an adjunct professor of English at Drexel University. Called one of the most “poignantly witty voices of our time” (Bucks County Community College), she is the author of nine books, most recently the short story collection “House Parties” (Spuyten Duyvil, 2023), named one of the best books of summer by Philadelphia Magazine, and the poetry collections “The Minor Virtues” (Ragged Sky, 2020) and “Miss Plastique” (Ragged Sky, 2013). Her poetry, fiction, essays, and translations have appeared in Boulevard, Ploughshares, Smartish Pace, Scientific American, Massachusetts Review, The Saturday Evening Post, Michigan Quarterly Review, and other places. Her website is lynnlevinpoet.com.
An excerpt from “Little Secrets,” a short story from her collection “House Parties” (Spuyten Duyvil, 2023), follows.
Little Secrets
Maurice Warminster, the winner of practically every major poetry prize in the country, the man to whom Kerrie Shapiro had dedicated Little Secrets, her first collection of poems; the man who was Kerrie’s cherished thesis advisor, who told her to give herself over to poetry, that sideways was the best way into a poem, to make the strange familiar and the familiar strange; the man who, in defiance of the MFA program’s very strict policy, had bedded her many times including once, memorably, at a conference in San Miguel de Allende; Maurice Warminster, who declined to recommend Kerrie’s manuscript to his friend Jack at Stonington Press or Melvin at Megillah Press, claiming that he had made a new year’s resolution not to pull strings for students (even as Kerrie knew that he was a consummate puller of strings); Maurice Warminster, who also had begged off blurbing her book, though Kerrie made the case that their closeness should mean something to him; Kerrie’s own Maurice, whom she loved still and anyway, was to give the John Keats Society reading at Gailor College where Kerrie was now an adjunct in English comp. The news that Maurice was coming shot through her breast like a golden arrow.
Princeton Makes is a cooperative comprised of 37 local artists who work across a range of artistic genres, including painting, drawing, stained glass, sculpture, textiles, and jewelry. Customers will be able to support local artists by shopping for a wide variety of art, including large paintings, prints, custom-made greeting cards, stained glass lamps and window hangings, jewelry in a variety of designs and patterns, and more.
Ragged Sky is a small, highly selective cooperative press that has historically focused on mature voices, overlooked poets, and women’s perspectives.
Second Sunday Poetry Reading, Princeton Makes, Princeton Shopping Center, 301 North Harrison Street, Princeton. Sunday, December 8, 4 p.m. Free. www.princetonmakes.com.
Lynn Levin,
