Don Thompson and Kim Roberts to Read at Sunken Garden Poetry & Music Festival
Don Thompson
Hill-Stead Museum has announced the 2009 winners of the museum’s prestigious National Poetry Competition for adults. Final judge, Connecticut poet and professor Gray Jacobik, selected First Place winner Don Thompson and Second-Place winner Kim Roberts from a field of over 100 submissions. The winners will read at the renowned Sunken Garden Poetry & Music Festival, now in its 17th season, opening June 10, 2009.
Author of several chapbooks including Been There, Done That and Turning Sixty (March Street Press), Sittin’ on Grace Slick’s Stoop (Pudding House), and Where We Live (Parallel Press, University of Wisconsin, Spring 2009), Don Thompson received First Place for his chapbook manuscript, Back Roads, described by Jacobik as “absolutely stunning, unified… deeply sensitive, responsive to the natural world…” On August 5, Mr. Thompson will take the podium before Pulitzer Prize-winning poet C.K. Williams. Born and raised in Bakersfield, California Thompson has been writing poetry for almost twenty five years but has only recently begun to publish his work. Thompson with lives on a family farm and makes his living teaching at a small prison and as an adjunct at Bakersfield College.
Kim Roberts
Kim Roberts is the editor of Beltway Poetry Quarterly and the author of two books of poetry, The Kimnama (Vrzhu Press) and The Wishbone Galaxy (Washington Writers Publishing House). She has been featured in numerous anthologies and has published widely in national and international literary journals. Jacobik found Roberts’ manuscript, Exhibitionist, to be “beautifully crafted, with a strong range of approaches to form and fascinating materials.” Ms. Roberts is scheduled to read at the Festival on July 8, along with Fresh Voices, the museum’s statewide competition-winning High School students.
Since 1992, audiences have enjoyed verse and music among the fragrant blooms of Hill-Stead’s historic Sunken Garden. Described by three-time Poetry Festival reader Billy Collins as “a cultural phenomenon,” the summer-long performance series has featured the likes of Yusef Komunyakaa, Sharon Olds, Grace Paley and Robert Pinsky. Poetry performances coming up in 2009 are:
June 10: Robert Hass, Brenda Hillman / Music by Classical Spirits
June 24: Baron Wormser, CT Poetry Circuit College Winners / Music by New York-based Uptown Trio
July 8: Night of Fresh Voices, Adult Competition 2nd prize winner Kim Roberts / Music by Freddie Bryant and his Trio
July 22: Marilyn Nelson, with Cave Canem poets-in-residents at Soul Mountain Retreat / Music by Tomás Doncker
August 5: C.K. Williams, Adult Competition 1st prize winner Don Thompson / Music by The Bagboys
The gates open at 4:30 pm. Picnicking is allowed; participants may bring their own food or purchase sandwiches, salads, desserts and drinks on site. Attendance is free. On-site parking is $10 per car.
A National Historic Landmark and an Official Project of Save America’s Treasures, Hill-Stead Museum in Farmington, CT, is a member of Connecticut’s Historic Gardens and a stop on the Connecticut Art Trail (www.arttrail.org), a partnership of fifteen world-class museums and historic sites across the state. The museum’s period rooms are open for tours Tuesday through Sunday, 11 am – 4 pm, November - April, and 10 am – 5 pm May - October. Grounds are open to the public daily 7:30 am-5:30 pm.
Hill-Stead is noted for its 1901 33,000-square-foot house filled with art and antiques. Pioneering female architect Theodate Pope Riddle designed the grand house, set on 152 hilltop acres, to showcase the Impressionist masterpieces amassed by her father, Cleveland iron industrialist Alfred A. Pope. Collections include original furnishings, paintings by Monet, Degas, Manet, Whistler and Cassatt, as well as numerous works on paper and Japanese woodblock prints. Stately trees, seasonal gardens, meadows, over three miles of stone walls and blazed hiking trails accent the grounds. A centerpiece of the property is the c. 1920 sunken garden designed by Beatrix Farrand, today the site of the renowned Sunken Garden Poetry & Music Festival.
