A Grolier reading for Menkiti, new poet laureate sought, Kessler’s verses - The Boston Globe (2024)

Honoring Ifeanyi Menkiti at the Grolier

On Saturday, Aug. 24, the Grolier Poetry Book Shop hosts its 4th annual Ifeanyi Menkiti Memorial Reading, honoring Menkiti — a poet, philosopher, and professor — who bought the Grolier in 2006 and owned it until his death in 2019. Menkiti saved the storied spot from having its doors closed, and his family keeps the place alive now, a tiny temple to poetry, high shelves lined with poetry collections, and photographs, many taken by the late Elsa Dorfman, of poets from its history keeping watch from the walls. Gordon Cairnie and Adrian Gambet founded the bookstore in 1927 — it’s the oldest continuously run poetry bookshop in the United States — and literary lights including Seamus Heaney, Anais Nin, Conrad Aiken, Elizabeth Bishop, and T.S. Eliot all spent time in the space. The reading takes place on Menkiti’s birthday, and this year includes readings by poet and nurse practitioner Andrea Fry; former Boston Poet Laureate and Lesley professor Danielle Legros Georges; Sajed Kamal, poet, artist, translator, psychotherapist, and lecturer at Brandeis; and U-Meleni Mhlaba-Adebo, a Zimbabwean-American artist and creative consultant. The reading takes place at 7 p.m. at 113 Brattle St. in Cambridge, and can be watched via Zoom as well. For more information and to register, visit grolierpoetrybookshop.org.

Boston seeking new Poet Laureate

The City of Boston is currently accepting applications for the 2025 Boston Poet Laureate program. The Poet Laureate works as ambassador in Boston’s literary and creative communities, and the role involves elevating poetry’s position in the day-to-day lives of Bostonians. The program was established in 2008 and Sam Cornish, a poet associated with the Black Arts Movement, served as the inaugural Poet Laureate. Danielle Legros Georges served her term from 2015 to 2019 and instigated the “Raining Poetry” program, and a poetry workshop for elders, among other programs. Porsha Olayiwola, the current laureate, launched the Youth Poet Laureate program and founded the Roxbury Poetry Festival. The four-year term begins on July 1, 2025, and duties include attending official functions, developing public programming, serving as a resource for the Youth Poet Laureate selection process, and other responsibilities. There’s a $5,000 honorarium and a $20,000 budget for programmatic and administrative expenses. Applicants need to be at least 21 years old, have lived in Boston for at least two years, and be an active poet. The application requires a resume, writing samples of published work, a proposal, and confirmation of Boston residency. Nominations close on Sept. 13, and the due date for applications is September 30. For more information and to apply, visit boston.gov/departments/arts-and-culture/city-boston-poet-laureate/2025-boston-poet-laureate-application.

A volume of Poetry from Kessler

Author Rod Kessler taught writing at Salem State for over 30 years, and primarily wrote fiction. A new book collects his poetry for the first time, gathering poems written throughout his lifetime paired with his sketches and cartoons. The poignant and plainspoken poems in “Self-Portrait with Tree,” published by the Salem-based Winter Island Press, are clear-eyed and loneliness-tinged. “We hold / nothing in our fists but our fingers,” he writes. There’s a sense of movement and stall, of progress and its lack, of running towards and away. “I must keep / going, I am so lost.” And later: “I’ve been going nowhere / fast, why not try slow?” The limits of language are addressed with wry affection: “You are like something . . . Did you steal / beyond my capacity / to respond / in simile?” And there’s a reckoning with the beyond here, too, the accumulated losses, what’s there outside the boundaries of what we see. “At my window / I see beyond the trees / to the trees beyond.” The collection is available at Copper Dog Books in Beverly.

Coming out

“The Slow Road North: How I Found Peace in an Improbably Country” by Rosie Schaap (Mariner)

“Becoming Little Shell: A Landless Indian’s Journey Home” by Chris La Tray (Milkweed)

“Planes Flying Over a Monster” by Daniel Saldaña París (Catapult)

Pick of the week

Betsy at the Toadstool Bookshop in Peterborough, New Hampshire, recommends “On a Summer Night” by Deborah Hopkinson, illustrated by Kenard Park (Chronicle): “Explore the magic and mystery of stepping outside, alone, in the quiet of a summer’s night with this ode to solitude and independence. The unusual use of second person narrative and gentle refrain make this the perfect read for slowing down at day’s end, and the simplicity of the text echoes the beauty and peace of a summer night.”

Nina MacLaughlin is the author of “Wake, Siren.” She can be reached at nmaclaughlin@gmail.com.