FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - Contact: Lisa Lappe, , 860-677-4787 x111
June 10, 2015: FARMINGTON, CT- Festival tickets are available at
2015 Sunken Garden Poetry Festival is
American Sign Language Interpreted
Wednesday, June 24
Ted Kooser, Pulitzer Prize and Former United States Poet Laureate
& Hadara Bar-Nadav, Sunken Garden Poetry Chapbook Winner
Sunday, July 12
Marie Howe, Former New York State Poet Laureate
& Ciaran Berry
Wednesday, July 22
Vijay Seshadri, Pulitzer Prize
& Ravi Shankar
Sunday, August 9–OUTSPOKEN: CELEBRATION OF ASIAN POETRY
Li-Young Lee, Award Winning Poet
& Tina Chang, Poet Laureate of Brooklyn
Wednesday, August 19 - CT YOUNG POETS DAY
Natalie Diaz, Award Winning Poet
Aja Monet & Fresh Voices Competition Winners
The Sunken Garden Poetry Festival is a unique outdoor arts event located on the grounds of this National Historic Landmark in the heart of Farmington. Beginning on June 24, this American Sign Language interpreted festival presents the first of five performances, scheduled for three Wednesday evenings and two Sunday afternoons throughout the summer. Adding to the humanities-rich content of the festival, Hill-Stead offers poetry writingworkshops for all performances (hillstead.org for workshop information). The community cherishes this series of readings and music concerts in the informal outdoor setting of the Hill-Stead estate. Visitors can come early to tour the museum’s world-class Impressionist art collection, walk the trails or attend the pre-performance prelude conversations with the headlining poets.
Wednesday Schedule: Gates open at 4:30 pm; prelude conversation with headlining poet at 5 pm;opening poet at 6:00 pm;music begins at 6:30 pm; headliningpoet begins at 7:15 pm
Sunday Schedule: Gates open at 1:30 pm; prelude conversation with headlining poet at 2 pm;opening poet at 3:00 pm; music begins at 3:30 pm; headlining poet begins at 4:15 pm(August 9th also features a community reading of Asian and Asian-American poetry at noon)
Admission: $12 advanced on-line purchase, $15 at the gate, ages 18 and under free. Parking is free.
Seating: Bring a lawn chair or blanket for seating in and around the garden, or join Hill-Stead’s Live Poets Society to receive premier reserved seating.
Food:Al fresco dining is allowed on the grounds. Festival attendees are welcome to bring their own picnic suppers or purchase food/beverages on site from gourmet food vendors.
Poets, pg. 2 of 4
Wednesday,June 24 - Ted Kooser
The festival opens with United States Poet Laureate (2004-2006) and Pulitzer Prize-winning Poet Ted Kooser. Ted Kooser is the author of 14 full-length collections of poetry; includingSplitting An Order (2014),Weather Central, and Delights and Shadows, which won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize. His prose books include The Wheeling Year (2014) and Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps, which won the Nebraska Book Award for Nonfiction in 2003. His writing has appeared in many periodicals including The Atlantic Monthly, Poetry, The Hudson Review, The Nation, The American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, and Antioch Review. He has received two NEA fellowships in poetry, and written three children’s books from Candlewick Press, The Bell in the Bridge (2015), Bag in the Wind, illustrated by Barry Root, and The House Held Up by Trees.
Sunday, July 12 – Marie Howe
Marie Howe is the 2012-2014 Poet Laureate of New York State. She is the author of three volumes of poetry;The Kingdom of Ordinary Time,The Good Thief, and What the Living Do. She is also the co-editor of a book of essays, In the Company of My Solitude: American Writing from the AIDS Pandemic. She has been a fellow at the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe College and a recipient of NEA and Guggenheim fellowships. Stanley Kunitz selected Howe for a Lavan Younger Poets Prize from the American Academy of Poets. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Poetry, AGNI, Ploughshares, Harvard Review, and The Partisan Review, among others.
Wednesday, July 22 – Vijay Seshadri
The featured poet will be Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Vijay Seshadri. He is the author of three collections of poetry;3 Sections, which was awarded the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, The Long Meadow, which won the James Laughlin Award, and Wild Kingdom. His poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in AGNI, The American Scholar, Antaeus, Bomb, Boulevard, Lumina, The Nation, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Shenandoah, Southwest Review, The Threepenny Review, Verse, Western Humanities Review, Yale Review, The Times Book Review, the Philadelphia Enquirer, Bomb, San Diego Reader, and TriQuarterly, and in many anthologies, including Under 35: The New Generation of American Poets, Contours of the Heart, Staying Alive: Real Poems for Unreal Times, and Best American Poetry.
Sunday, August 9 – Li-Young Lee & Tina Chang – OUTSPOKEN: A Celebration of Asian Poetry
Hill-Stead presents a full weekend of Asian art, culture, and poetry performances.
Li-Young Lee is the author of four books of poetry, including, most recently, Behind My Eyes. His earlier collections are Book of My Nights,Rose, winner of the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award,The City in Which I Love You, the 1990 Lamont Poetry Selection, and a memoir entitled The Winged Seed: A Remembrance, which received an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation and was reissued by BOA Editions in 2012. Lee’s honors include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Lannan Foundation, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, as well as grants from the Illinois Arts Council, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.
Poets, pg. 3 of 4
Tina Chang is the Poet Laureate of Brooklyn. The first woman named to this position, she was raised in New York City. She is the author of the poetry collections Half-Lit Houses and Of Gods & Strangers (Four Way Books) and co-editor of the anthology Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia and Beyond (W.W. Norton, 2008) along with Nathalie Handal and Ravi Shankar. Her poems have appeared in American Poet, McSweeney’s, Ploughshares, and The New York Times among others.
IN THE MUSEUM: As part of its Open House format during the Festival, Hill-Stead Museum will display its rarely-seen collection of original Asian wood-block prints, Chinese porcelain, and other unique Asian objects.
Wednesday, August 19 – CT Young Poet’s Day – Natalie Diaz & Aja Monet
The season concludeswith CT Young Poet’s Day beginning at 5 pm with the “Fresh Voices” reading, featuring winners from eight Connecticut poetry programs. In addition to students from the museum’s own Fresh Voices Competition and Hartford Poetry Outreach, participants will include students from Poetry Out Loud, Connecticut Young Writers Trust, Connecticut Poetry Circuit, Student Poets Laureate at the Arts Café Mystic, OneWord CT/National Youth Poetry Slam Team and ASAP After School Arts Program. Following the Fresh Voices reading, audiences will enjoy music and reading by poets, Natalie Diaz and Aja Monet.
Native American Poet Natalie Diaz is the author of When My Brother Was an Aztec. Her work has been recognized by the Lannan Foundation, and she has received the Nimrod/Hardman Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry, the Louis Untermeyer Scholarship in Poetry from Bread Loaf, and the Narrative Poetry Prize. Her poetry and other writing can be found in Ploughshares, Narrative, The Rumpus, and Gwarlingo. She lives in Arizona.
Aja Monet is an award-winning performance poet. Harry Belafonte once called Aja Monet “The true definition of an artist.” An internationally established poet, Monet is the youngest individual to win the legendary Nuyorican Poet’s Café Grand Slam title. Her books of poetry are Inner-City Chants & Cyborg Cyphers, (2015) and The Black Unicorn Sings (Penmanship Books). In addition, she collaborated with poet/musician Saul Williams on the book Chorus: a literary mixtape (MTV books/Simon & Schuster). Her first CD Scared to Make Love/Scared Not To, a testament to her creative lens and a social commentary on the discussion of love, was independently released through Bandcamp. Of Cuban-Jamaican heritage, Monet has performed at world-renowned venues including the Town Hall Theater, the Apollo Theater, the United Nations in New York City, and the NAACP’s Barack Obama Inaugural event in Washington DC.
Poets, pg. 3 of 4
2015 Sunken Garden Poetry Festival Daily SCHEDULE
Wednesday, June 24 - Ted Kooser
Food Truck: Fryborg
4:30 Gates open
5:00 John Stanizzi’s prelude conversation with Ted KooserCarriage Barn
6:00 Hadara Bar-Nadav opensSunken Garden Stage
6:30 (Amy Gallatin & Stillwaters) Music beginsSunken Garden Stage
7:15Ted Kooser performsSunken Garden Stage
Thursday, June 25
10-12Writing workshop with Ted KooserCarriage Barn
Sunday, July 12 – Marie Howe
Food Truck: Eat at Bernie’s
10 – 12Writingworkshop with Marie HoweCarriage Barn
1:30Gates open
2:00Ciaran Berry delivers prelude conversation with Marie HoweCarriage Barn
3:00Ciaran Berry opensSunken Garden Stage
3:30Jazz Music beginsSunken Garden Stage
4:15Marie Howe performsSunken Garden Stage
Wednesday, July 22 – Vijay Seshadri
Food Truck: Get it Toasted
4:30Gates open
5:00Ravi Shankar delivers prelude conversation with Vijay SeshadriCarriage Barn
6:00Ravi Shankar opensSunken Garden Stage
6:30Mike Assetta Jazz Duo beginsSunken Garden Stage
7:15Vijay Seshadri performsSunken Garden Stage
Thursday, July 23
10-12Writing workshop with Vijay SeshadriCarriage Barn
Sunday, August 9 – Li-Young Lee & Tina Chang – OUTSPOKEN: Celebration of Asian Poetry
Saturday, August 8:
12:30 – 2:30Recitation and discussion workshop Tina ChangCarriage Barn
3:00 – 5:00 Writing workshop with Li-Young LeeCarriage Barn
Food Truck: Get it Toasted
Sunday, August 9:
NoonTina Chang’s community readingCarriage Barn
1:30Gates open
2:00 Jeffrey Partridge, prelude conversation with Li-Young Lee & Tina ChangCarriage Barn
3:00Tina Chang opensSunken Garden Stage
3:30 (Celadon Youth Ensemble) Asian Music performanceSunken Garden Stage
4:15 Li-Young Lee performsSunken Garden Stage
Wednesday, August 19 – CT Young Poet’s Day – Natalie Diaz & Aja Monet
Food Truck: Get it Toasted
Noon Young Poet’s writing workshop with Aja MonetCarriage Barn
2:00 Young Poet’s writing workshop with Natalie DiazCarriage Barn
4:30Gates open
5:00Introduction by NBC Connecticut - Fresh Voices student winners performSunken Garden Stage
6:00Aja Monet opens with her bandSunken Garden Stage
7:00Natalie Diaz performs Sunken Garden Stage