Meet Margaret Gibson, Connecticut State Poet Laureate, 2019-2022! She will be reading her poetry as well as talking about what it’s like to be a Poet Laureate.
Margaret Gibson is the author of 12 books of poems, most recently Not Hearing the Wood Thrush (2018.) Her new book, The Glass Globe, will be coming out later this year.
She has won numerous awards, including the Lamont Selection for Long Walks in the Afternoon (1982) the Melville Kane Award (co-winner) for Memories of the Future, (1986), and the Connecticut Book Award for One Body (2008.) The Vigil was a Finalist for the National Book Award in Poetry in 1993. Broken Cup was a Finalist for 2016 Poets’ Prize, and the title poem from the book won a Pushcart Prize for that year. “Passage,” from Not Hearing the Wood Thrush, was included in The Best American Poetry, 2017. She has also written a memoir, The Prodigal Daughter (2008.)
She is the editor of Waking Up to the Earth: Connecticut Poets in a Time of Global Climate Crisis coming out in April. Waking Up to the Earth is an anthology of poems by Connecticut poets who write of their relationships with the earth in a time of global climate crisis. The scope of the poems goes far beyond Connecticut to the whole ecosystem we humans share. With praise and wonder, and sometimes with grief or anger, the poems in this collection pay close attention to our planet and its inhabitants, its forests and oceans, its creatures: turtles and dung beetles, bats and bobcats, oak trees, orchards, and rivers. In a time of climate crisis, the poems in this anthology ask everyone to wake up to the earth, and to cherish it.
Gibson is Professor Emerita, University of Connecticut. She lives in Preston, CT. You can learn more about her at https://www.margaretgibsonpoetry.com
“Waking Up to the Earth is a timely, powerful, and persuasive wake-up call. Read in it; read through it. It will not leave you unchanged.” -Eamon Grennan.
Note: This program will be presented through Zoom and will be closed-captioned. Registration is required. A Zoom link will be mailed to you before the event.
Thank you to the Friends of the Avon Free Public Library for sponsoring this program!