Manor Mill Poetry Day
Saturday June 1, 2024
Registration Now Open!
We are excited to announce our first annual Poetry Day which will take place at Manor Mill on Saturday June 1st 2024. We hope you will be able to join us for all or some of our poetry-based events and activities. Please see below for further details on scheduling and registration for the day.
Schedule:
10am - 12 noon — Ekphrastic Poetry Readings
12 - 1pm — Lunch
1 - 3pm — Poetry Workshops
3 - 4PM — AFTERNOON TEA
4 - 5PM — Poetry Readings (FROM WORKSHOPS)
5 - 7:30pm — Dinner BREAK
7:30 - 9:30pm — “Poetry and Piano” Concert
See below for further details on each event.
10am - 12 noon — Ekphrastic Poetry Readings
Register in advance to read during this ekphrastic event. When registered, you will have the opportunity to write a poem that responds to one of the artworks that will be on display in the galleries of Manor Mill at the time of the event.
The exhibition running up to June 1 will be called Birds: Avian Exploration with artwork from Jennifer Hudson, Brenda Kidera, Chris Maynard, Deborah McFarlin, Kristen T. Woodward and others, so your ekphrastic poems will be inspired by that theme.
Registered poets select their artwork and write their poem ahead of time. You will able to visit the Mill in the weeks leading up to this event to write in front of your artwork, if you choose. Or, poems can be written from digital images provided after registration. On June 1st, from 10am - 12 noon, we will move as a group from artwork to artwork, listening to the poems that registered participants have prepared for us.
*When registering for a Day Pass or a Day and Concert Pass (see links above) please click the check box to register for this morning event. Limited spots available. Please register early.
1 - 3pm — Poetry Workshops
Choose from a selection of workshops run by local poets Shirley J Brewer, Tafisha Edwards, Michael Fallon, Matt Hohner on a variety of poetry-based themes. There will be an opportunity to share poems written in these workshops later in the day.
Details of each workshop is listed below.
Workshop 1
A Jolt of Joy in June/Awakening Creative Inspiration
with Shirley J Brewer
This is a workshop for everyone who would like to explore and reinvigorate their Imaginations and Creative Potentials. All you need is a willingness to participate, to expand your creative genes, and to see the world in new ways. There will be a variety of short writing exercises, all in the spirit of joy! Included will be activities designed to flex your creative brain and sharpen your observations!! The instructor will use poems as prompts to inspire your new poems! You will practice tapping into your Right Brain/Creative Side. PREPARE for dazzling opportunities to PLAY, and PARTICIPATE in the glorious realm of your imagination!! For all levels: Beginning, Intermediate, Advanced Writers.
Shirley J. Brewer (Baltimore MD) is a poet, educator, and workshop facilitator. She serves as poet-in-residence at Carver Center for the Arts & Technology. A Pushcart Prize nominee, her poems garnish Barrow Street, Passager, Gargoyle, Poetry East, Slant, Welter, among other journals and anthologies. Shirley’s poetry books include A Little Breast Music (Passager Books), After Words (Apprentice House Press), and Bistro in Another Realm (Main Street Rag). Her fourth poetry collection, Wild Girls was published by Apprentice House Press in June, 2023. Shirley was interviewed in January, 2020 by Maryland poet laureate, Grace Cavalieri, for her long-running series “The Poet and the Poem” at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. Her poems are now archived at the LOC and – as part of the Lunar Codex program - are currently on the moon! Shirley was chosen to receive the first-ever Creativity Award prior to earning her Master’s in Creative Writing/Publishing Arts from the University of Baltimore in 2005. Website: shirleyjbrewer.com
Workshop 2
Learning to Use the Full Rainbow of Sound in Your Poetry:
a Workshop on Consonant Sounds, Alliteration, and Consonance
with Michael FalLOn
Consonance is the repetition of consonant sounds in general; alliteration is the repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of words. Today, we see poetry much more often than we actually hear it read. As a result, many contemporary writers, even poets, often do not pay enough attention to sound in their work. Sound is another way of creating music, imagery, and ultimately meaning and emotion in poetry, to neglect it is to write, at best, dull prose but certainly not good poetry. In this workshop we will have a go at writing some poems that take advantage the vivid, powerful sounds of different families of consonants—all of which create different kinds of music--and try using them in patterns of alliteration and consonance.
Michael Fallon is Senior Lecturer Emeritus in English at University of Maryland, Baltimore County where he taught expository writing, creative writing, and literature for 35 years. He has been President of the Maryland State Poetry and Literary Society and an editor of Puerto del Sol and was the founding editor of The Maryland Poetry Review. Poems have appeared in The American Scholar, Crosswinds Poetry Journal, The Connecticut River Review, The Loch Raven Review, Illuminations, Southword, Slipstream, The Bangalore Review, and many other publications. Fallon is the winner of two Fellowships in Poetry from the Maryland State arts Council in 1988 and in 2009 and is the author of 5 published collections of poetry, A History of the Color Black, Dolphin-Moon Press, 1991; Since You Have No Body, winner of the Plan B Press Poetry Chapbook Competition, 2011; The Great Before and After, BrickHouse Books, 2011, and the self-published, Empire of Leaves, Singing Man Press, 2018. Essays have appeared recently in The New England Review, on lit hub-The Best of the Literary Internet, The Concho River Review, Broad Street Literary Review, The Razor, The Northern Virginia Review, and Blood and Thunder, and podcast on Pendustradio.com. Fallon’s poems have been frequently recorded on CDs and broadcast on Public Radio. His recent poetry chapbook, Leaf Notes: Poems of the Plague Years, was published by Writer’s Relief, and won the 2021 Water Sedge Poetry Prize. To sample his work, read reviews, blogs and more, visit his website: michaelfallonpoetandessayist.com.
Workshop 3
A Dialogue Between External and Internal Worlds
with Matt Hohner
The goal of this workshop will be to utilize the senses, deepen and widen the understanding and imagination of a place, its history and future, both human and natural, and our individual place as poets within those contexts. This will be observational, immersing in and paying attention to the external stimuli of one’s immediate and wider surroundings, while also tapping into and exploring the inner landscapes of one’s unique experience, memories, knowledge, and interests. Using examples from contemporary poets and old, master bards along with directed prompts and focused free writing, this workshop will help provide ways to share our experiences in this place and time not only with our fellow human beings, but with folks a hundred years after we’re gone. NOTE: please dress appropriately for an outdoor workshop amidst the beautiful natural setting of Manor Mill. If the weather is too inclement to venture outside, we will follow an adjusted workshop plan that will flex the same creative muscles inside the mill building.
Matt Hohner has won or placed in numerous national and international poetry competitions, including wins in the Doolin International Poetry Prize in Ireland, the Oberon Magazine Poetry Prize, and the Maryland Writers’ Association Prize. His publications include Rattle: Poets Respond, Sky Island Journal, The Cardiff Review, The Storms Journal, New Contrast, Live Canon, and Prairie Schooner. An editor with Loch Raven Review, Hohner’s first collection, Thresholds and Other Poems (Apprentice House), was published in 2018. His second collection, At the Edge of a Thousand Years, which won the 2023 Jack Press Full-length Poetry Book Award, will be available in April 2024.
3 - 4PM — AFTERNOON TEA
Enjoy an English afternoon tea ($5 donation appreciated) served by our resident British poet Mel Edden while you mingle with other poets, buy books and enjoy the artwork of the Mill.
4 - 5pm — Poetry Readings
Enjoy freshly-brewed poems from our afternoon workshops!
5 - 7:30pm — Dinner BREAK
Time to go get some dinner, but don’t forget to come back for our concert!
7:30 - 9:30pm — “Poetry and Piano” Concert
Come and listen to a delectable arrangement of poetry and piano music performed by various local poets and musicians in the beautiful setting of The Loft at Manor Mill.
Featured poets: Shirley J. Brewer, Michael Fallon and Matt Hohner.
Featured on piano: John Nauman and Matt Nikzad.
“Poetry & piano” concert - Featured Poets and MUSICIANS:
Poets
Michael Fallon
See Michael’s bio above
Shirley J Brewer
See Shirley’s bio above
Matt Hohner
See Matt’s bio above
Pianists
John Nauman held The Van Cliburn Scholarship at The Juilliard School where he received his Bachelor and Master degrees. He went on to win various piano competitions including the American Music Scholarship Association Competition and to perform with The Boston Pops, Academy of London, Tampere (Finland) Philharmonic, Atlanta, Phoenix, Rochester and Baltimore Symphony Orchestras, among others. The Fort Worth Star Telegram writes that John "is a leading exemplar of the American school, achieving profundity and beauty through a powerful and completely relaxed technique." A charismatic and passionate performer, Mr. Nauman is uniquely gifted in his ability to communicate those qualities to his audiences. John is also a Steinway Artist and made his Lincoln Center Debut at Alice Tully Hall. He was featured on ABC's Nightline, documenting The Eighth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition and is prominently featured in Joseph Horowitz' book, The Ivory Trade. John taught at The Juilliard School Pre-College and was on the artist faculty at The Aspen Music Festival and School.
See John play "Waltz" by Ricky Ian Gordon, November, Brahms D minor, 3rd Movement and "Theme from Schindler's List" by John Williams.
Matt Nikzad was born and raised in Perry Hall, Maryland, and is the son of Persian immigrants. Matt is currently working on his Master’s in Genetic Counseling degree at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. He is a classically-trained pianist and composer.