On April 19, Stone Soup assembles once again at the Jamaica Plain branch of the Boston Public Library on 30 South Street from 6:30 to 8:00 PM. We pay tribute to the late Walter Howard, a poet whose presence was felt for decades across Boston, Cambridge and anywhere there was an open mic in New England. We gather not just to read his work in tribute but to invite others to share poems and stories as well as purchase the recently released Walter Howard: Reflections in Moonlight.
Joan Alice Wood Kimball is a member of the Wayland Poetry
Workshop, where she met Walter Howard and followed him to many open mike
readings in the area. She is the editor of
Walter Howard: Reflections
in Moonlight, along with editor Debra Martin, who first suggested to
Walter that we publish his poems. When Walter went into a nursing home
in 2015 and his papers were lost, Kimball and other members of the
workshop scrambled to find copies of his work. They ended up with 142
poems. Fifty-three are in the present collection, which is being
published posthumously. Walter died this past January 2018. Kimball
herself has poems in two chapbooks and many journals. Her limerick,
"Cold October," is inscribed on granite in Edmands Park, Newton.
Debra
K. Martin is a poet, photographer, mixed-media artist, and retired
technical writer. She currently lives in Groton, MA, but is originally
from the hills of West Virginia where she graduated with a bachelor
degree in psychology. During her years as a member of the Wayland Poetry
Workshop, Debra enjoyed listening to Walter Howard read his evocative
poems and was surprised to find he kept most of them handwritten in
stacks of dusty boxes. Thus began her effort to convince him to let her
and another member, Kay Harrington, type them on the computer. He
resisted, not wanting to briefly part with them. Much later, Walter was
admitted to a nursing facility and wished to have his poems published.
Debra became the co-editor of the poetry book
Walter Howard: Reflections
in Moonlight, along with fellow workshop member, Joan Kimball.
Steve
Glines is the Editor-in-Chief and Publisher of Wilderness House Press
and
Wilderness House Literary Review, an online quarterly. In his past
lives, he has been a general assignment reporter, a political
commentator, a technical writer with two monthly technical columns and
half a dozen computer science books to his credit. Today he writes
poetry and fiction. In 2016 he was awarded the Ibbetson Street Press
Lifetime Achievement Award and a lifetime achievement award from the
Massachusetts State Democratic Party. He is a member of the Robert
Creeley Foundation and is a past Assistant District Governor for Rotary
International.
Cheryl Perreault is host/founder of Wake up and
Smell the Poetry and Bittersweet Co. True Storytelling. With a
background in psychology and education, she brings the art of poetry and
life review story-sharing to different community settings and
residences of people ranging from school-age to elders/hospice stage of
life as she believes everyone has a an inner poet within. Her poetry is
published upon invitation and she is especially fond of participating
in Plein Air Poetry readings. She is co-editor of Hopkinton Through
Poetry with Cynthia Franca, performs celebrant programs with Carolyn
Waters and has two CDS of her spoken word poetry performed with
guitarist Steve Rapson.
Literary performer & educator,
Regie Gibson, has lectured & performed in the U.S., Europe &
Cuba. Representing the U.S., Regie competed for & received the
Absolute Poetry Award in Monfalcone, Italy. Himself & his work
appear in
love jones, a film based on events in his life. He is a
National Poetry Slam champion, has featured on HBO, several TED X events
& various NPR programs including On Point & Radio
Boston. He’s received the Walker Scholarship for Poetry from the
Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center & a YMCA Writer’s Fellowship.
He’s served as consultant for both the National Endowment for the Arts
“How Art Works” initiative & “The Mere Distinction of Color”: an
exhibit at James Madison’s Montpelier, examining the legacy of slavery.
Regie has performed with & composed for The Boston City Singers,
The Mystic Chorale & the Handel+Haydn Society. His volume of
poems, “Storms Beneath the Skin” received the Golden Pen Award &
his work appears in Poetry Magazine, Harvard’s Divinity Magazine
& The Iowa Review, among others. He has received a Massachusetts
Cultural Council Award, a Lexington Education Foundation Grant, and is a
2017 recipient of The Brother Thomas Fellowship from The Boston
Foundation. When not teaching, he is co-creator of Shakespeare to
Hiphop's "Shakespeare Time-Traveling Speakeasy," A multi-media
performance focusing on the influence of William Shakespeare.
David P. Miller’s chapbook,
The Afterimages, was published in 2014. His poems have recently appeared in
Meat for Tea, Ibbetson Street, Constellations, riverbabble, What Rough Beast, The Ekphrastic Review, and
Autumn Sky Poetry Daily. A Boston resident, he was a member of the multidisciplinary Mobius Artists Group for 25 years.
