April 28: Meg Kearney and Ewa Chrusciel Read Bird-Themed Poems at Norwich Bookstore (VT)

Featuring two acclaimed poets, Ewa Chrusciel (Yours, Purple Gallinule) and Meg Kearney (All Morning the Crows).

Ewa Chrusciel’s fourth book in English, Yours, Purple Gallinule, playfully explores health and illness as they are culturally constructed. Chrusciel maps various diagnostics onto an array of avian species. Intended as a lyrical satire, among the questions these book asks is: What does it mean to be unique, to accept pain and suffering as a fact of life?

Ewa Chrusciel is a poet, translator, and educator. She has four books of poems in English: Yours, Purple Gallinule (Omnidawn 2022), Of Annunciations (Omnidawn 2017), Contraband of Hoopoe (Omnidawn 2014), Strata (Emergency Press 2009, reprinted by Omnidawn, April 2018), as well as three books in Polish: Tobołek (2016) Sopiłki (2009), and Furkot (2003). Her book Contraband of Hoopoe was translated into Italian by Anna Aresi and came out in Italy with Edizioni Ensemble in May 2019.

Meg Kearney combines bird imagery with narratives about girls and women in All Morning the Crows. Kearney begins with two definitions of the word bird, which can mean the winged animal or, in British slang, a girl. A bird lover since childhood, the author delivers 51 poems, many inspired by 100 Birds and How They Got Their Names by Diana Wells.

In spring 2021, The Word Works Press published Meg Kearney’s All Morning the Crows, winner of the 2020 Washington Prize for poetry, which made Small Press Distribution’s poetry bestseller list April through September, 2021, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and was awarded the Silver Medal in Foreward Reviews Indies Book Award for Poetry.  Meg is also author of An Unkindness of Ravens and Home by Now, winner of the PEN New England L.L. Winship Award; a heroic crown, The Ice Storm, published as a chapbook in 2020; and three verse novels for teens.  Her award-winning picture book, Trouper, is illustrated by E.B. Lewis. Meg’s poetry has been featured on Garrison Keillor’s “A Writer’s Almanac” and Ted Kooser’s “American Life in Poetry” series, and included in the 2017 Best American Poetry anthology (Natasah Tretheway, guest editor).  A native New Yorker, she lives in New Hampshire and is founding director of the Solstice MFA in Creative Writing Program at Lasell University in Massachusetts.

Event date:  Friday, April 28, 2023 – 7:00pm