THREE POETS AND A PLAY
October 18 @ 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm
Laurel Park resident, poet Barbara Friend, will read from her work, joined by poetic novelist Edie Meidav and poet Richard Michelson, and followed by a performance of The Story: I can’t Remember Anything, a brief one-act play by Arthur Miller performed by Barbara Friend and Paul Powell.
Edie Meidav is the author of Lola, California; Crawl Space; and Another Love Discourse, among other books. She has won the Bard Fiction Prize and the Kafka Prize for Best Novel. Her work has been supported by the Fulbright Program, the Howard Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, the Whiting Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, and elsewhere . A senior editor at the journal (Itals!)Conjunctions, she teaches in the UMass Amherst MFA program, where she founded the Radius outreach project. More at https://www.ediemeidav.com/.
Richard Michelson is the author of four full length poetry collections, and two limited edition fine press books, illustrated by the artist Leonard Baskin. He was the 2008 Clemson University R. J. Calhoun Distinguished Reader in American Literature, and the recipient of two Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowships. Michelson hosts Northampton Poetry Radio, and served two terms as Poet Laureate of Northampton, Massachusetts. More at https://www.richardmichelson.com/.
Barbara Friend: For seven decades, Barbara Friend has been scribbling poetry and appearing onstage, radio, and TV; in stock and community theater. She’s won prizes from The Poetry Society of America, been published in Ms. Magazine and Thirtieth Year to Heaven, and has performed in Israel, Toronto, Seattle and New York, as Eliza Doolittle, Desdemona, Eleanor of Aquitaine and Saint Joan. She delights in the prospect of sharing words with residents and artists in Laurel Park, where she has lived for twenty years.
Paul Powell has appeared on stage most notably as little Ricky in David Rabe’s Sticks and Bones; as Terrible Jim Fitch in James Leo Herlihy’s hour long monologue of the same name; in several of Sam Shepard’s one acts including Cowboys Two; and in the premiere of Like There’s No Tomorrow, by Sonny Wasinger, performed in the Black Box at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, and several other theatrical productions and TV commercials. Paul is excited to return to the stage after three decades of helping raise his four children.
Arthur Miller’s short play, The Story: I can’t Remember Anything, is a poignant study of two old friends, an elderly man and woman, who live in nearby houses and often take their meals together. She is a wealthy widow whose life seems to have come to a stop after her husband’s death; he is a retired draftsman, a doctrinaire Communist who was her husband’s best friend despite the radical differences in life styles and political outlook. Both lament the passing of better days, the lack of contact with loved ones, and the loss of memory that clouds the meaningfulness of the time left to them.