Shelburne Falls Porch Music Festival is next Sunday, July 12, 2026!
https://www.shelburnefalls.com/porchfest
I’ll be reading poetry at 2-2:50 in the Arms public library backyard at 60 Bridge St., Shelburne Falls.
Plenty of other local authors are reading at the fest, including before me at the library, at Martin Espada’s at 105 Main St., and Janice Sorenson on the salmon mosaic-encrusted landing on the river on Conway Street.
Poetry and prose readings at the library schedule:
12:00 Dennis Merritt
12:30 Joan Livingston
1:00 Eve Christoph
1:30 Rosemary Christoph
2:00 Karina Lutz
I’ll be reading from my upcoming book, No Edges on a Sphere. I’m very excited about this book, the timing of it’s publication after twenty some odd years of development.
One section is about genocide and migration, one is about growing old in a country at war my entire lifetime, and one a vision of an earth-encircling peace pilgrimage.
Two epic poems bookend a section of shorter poems in this collection. Together they address the tangled issues of war, land “ownership,” colonization, genocide, and the war on earth itself. I trace these cultural diseases through decades of struggle to heal the United States of its lethal militarism,
Meanwhile, peace and justice movements have responded, recognizing earth as a sphere with no edges. symbolized by a Tibetan peace mandala coming down from the Himalaya at the same time westerners go to space and see Earth as a whole. My country, the US, has been at war my whole life, yet I want to offer a keen sense of the beauty and peace that concur regardless. I hope to uplift that peace without denying the horrors of war.
The book is a deep bow to the peacemakers I have known and walked along with on peace walks and marches: the final poem envisions those pilgrimages may soon merge to encircle the whole earth.
So please let me know if you want a postcard or email when the book is available.
And I hope you’ll come hear on Sunday at 2!
Enjoy!!!
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