Phosphorescence March 2022 featured poets:
Audrey Molloy, Barbara DeCoursey Roy, Maeve McKenna and Morag Anderson
VIRTUAL PROGRAM
This virtual program is free to attend. Registration is required.
To Emily Dickinson, phosphorescence, was a divine spark and the illuminating light behind learning — it was volatile, but transformative in nature. Produced by the Emily Dickinson Museum, the Phosphorescence Poetry Reading Series celebrates contemporary creativity that echoes Dickinson’s own revolutionary poetic voice. The Series features established and emerging poets whose work and backgrounds represent the diversity of the flourishing contemporary poetry scene. The 2021 Series will be a virtual event to ensure the health and safety of participants. While we are disappointed not to gather together in Amherst, we are excited to connect with a global community of friends and writers. Join us on the last Thursdays of each month to hear from poets around the world as they read their work and discuss what poetry and Dickinson mean to them.
About this month’s poets:
Audrey Molloy is an Irish poet living in Sydney. Her debut collection, The Important Things, was published by The Gallery Press in 2021. Her work has been widely published in Australia, Ireland and the UK. In 2020 she was awarded a Varuna Residential Fellowship. She is currently undertaking an MA in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University.
audreymolloy.com/
Barbara DeCoursey Roy lives near St Louis, Missouri. Her work has been published in The Gal-way Review, Headstuff, Skylight 47, Pendemic, and Popshot Quarterly. Barbara collaborated on How Bright The Wings Drive Us, which won first prize in the 2021 Dreich Alliance Chapbook competition. She is a founding member of the international writing group Poets Abroad.
Maeve McKenna is a poet living in Sligo, Ireland. Her poetry has been placed in several international poetry competitions, published in Mslexia, Orbis, Sand Magazine, Fly on the Wall, Channel Magazine among others and widely online. Maeve was a finalist in the Jacar Press Eavan Boland Mentorship Award 2020, and third in the Canterbury Poet of The Year in 2021. Her debut pamphlet will be published in February, 2022, by Fly On The Wall Press.
Morag Anderson is a Scottish poet based in Highland Perthshire. Her debut chapbook, Sin Is Due to Open in a Room Above Kitty’s (Fly on the Wall Press, 2021), explores human connections—concealed violence, love, and everything in between. Morag’s poetry has been published in many literary journals and anthologies.
Support Phosphorescence and Honor Someone Special:
Admission to all Phosphorescence events is free, but online donations, especially those made in honor or memory of family, friends, or colleagues are heartily encouraged and vital to the future of our programs. All gifts are tax deductible.
Dr. Tara Betts is the author of Break the Habit, Arc & Hue, and the forthcoming Refuse to Disappear. In addition to working as an editor, a teaching artist, and a mentor for other writers, she has taught at several universities. She is the Inaugural Poet for the People Practitioner Fellow at University of Chicago, an Artist in Residence at Northwestern University’s English Department, and founder of Whirlwind Learning Center. Tara can be found on twitter at @tarabetts. Her poetry has appeared in numerous anthologies and journals, including The Breakbeat Poets, Essence magazine, and Poetry Magazine.
Dr. Shauna M. Morgan is a poet-scholar and Associate Professor of creative writing and Africana literature at the University of Kentucky where she also serves as Director of Equity and Inclusion Initiatives in the Center for the Enhancement of Learning and Teaching (CELT). Before joining the University of Kentucky, Morgan was tenured on the faculty of English at Howard University where she taught from 2012-2019. Both her scholarly work and her poetry are deeply engaged with traditions of global Black art and culture. Her poetry has appeared in A Gathering Together, Interviewing the Caribbean, A Literary Field Guide to Southern Appalachia, ProudFlesh: New Afrikan Journal of Culture, Politics & Consciousness, among other periodicals and anthologies. Morgan’s chapbook, Fear of Dogs & Other Animals, was published by Central Square Press.
April’s Phosphorescence also features guest host, Lisa Pegram. Pegram is a writer, educator, literary publicist and acquisitions editor. Her chapbook Cracked Calabash was published by Central Square Press and she is contributing author of The Next Verse Mixtape vol. 1. She has over 20 years of experience in high-level arts integration program design for such organizations as the Smithsonian Institute, Corcoran Gallery of Art and National Geographic. Passionate about the arts as a tool for activism, she served as DC WritersCorps program director for a decade, and as co-chair of United Nations affiliate international women’s conferences in the US, India and Bali. As a publishing professional, her mission is to amplify and celebrate the voices and stories of BIPOC authors. Find our more at https://ladypcoq.wordpress.com/
Meg Kearney’s most recent poetry collection is All Morning the Crows, winner of the 2020 Washington Prize, which spent seven months on SPD’s poetry bestseller list after its 2021 release. Other collections include An Unkindness of Ravens and Home By Now, winner of the 2010 PEN New England LL Winship Award. Meg is also author of three critically acclaimed novels-in-verse for teens and award-winning picture book. She has taught poetry at The New School University, and is Founding Director of the Solstice MFA in Creative Writing Program in Massachusetts. Her poetry has been featured on Poetry Daily, Ted Kooser’s “American Life in Poetry” series, and Garrison Keillor’s “A Writer’s Almanac,” and has been published in myriad anthologies. A native New Yorker, Meg now lives in New Hampshire. 
Denise Low, Kansas Poet Laureate 2007-09, is winner of the Red Mountain Press Editor’s Choice Award for Shadow Light (Red Mountain Press). Other books include The Turtle’s Beating Heart: One Family’s Story of Lenape Survival (U. of Nebraska Press), Wing (Red Mountain), and A Casino Bestiary: Poems (Spartan Press). She edited a selection of poems by William Stafford in an edition with essays by other poets and scholars, Kansas Poems of William Stafford (Woodley). Low is a founding board member of Indigenous Native Poets. She is past board president of the Associated Writers and Writing Programs. She has won fellowships from the Kansas Arts Commission and recognition from the Poetry Society of America, The Circle -Best Native American Books, Roberts Foundation, Lichtor Awards, and NEH. Low has an MFA from Wichita State U. and Ph.D. from KU. She teaches for Baker University’s School of Professional and Graduate Studies. 
Marta McDowell teaches landscape history and horticulture at the New York Botanical Garden and consults for private clients and public gardens. Her latest book, Unearthing The Secret Garden explores the plants and places that inspired Frances Hodgson Burnett to write the classic children’s book. Timber Press also published Emily Dickinson’s Gardening Life, The World of Laura Ingalls Wilder, All the Presidents’ Gardens, and Beatrix Potter’s Gardening Life. All the Presidents’ Gardens made The New York Times bestseller list and won an American Horticultural Society book award in 2017. Beatrix Potter’s Gardening Life won the Gold Award from the Garden Writers Association and is now in its eighth printing. Her books have been translated into Chinese, Japanese and Korean. She is the 2019 recipient of the Garden Club of America’s Sarah Chapman Francis Medal for outstanding literary achievement. 
Dolores Hayden, urban historian and poet, is professor emerita at Yale University. Her books on the American landscape include The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History and Building Suburbia. Her poems appear in many journals and anthologies including Poetry, Raritan, Ecotone, Yale Review, The Common, and Best American Poetry. She is the author of three poetry collections: American Yard, Nymph, Dun, and Spinner, and Exuberance, set in the earliest years of American aviation when daredevil pilots—women and men—thrilled spectators who had never seen an airplane. 
Annemarie Ní Churreáin is a poet from Gaeltacht region of northwest Ireland. Her publications include Bloodroot (Doire Press, 2017), Town (The Salvage Press, 2018) and The Poison Glen (The Gallery Press, 2021). She is a recipient of the Arts Council’s Next Generation Artist Award and a co-recipient of The Markievicz Award. Ní Churreáin has written on various care institutions in Ireland including mother and baby homes, state industrial schools and hospitals. A former literary fellow of Akademie Schloss Solitude and The Jack Kerouac House of Orlando, Ní Churreáin currently lectures at the Yeats Academy of Arts, Design and Architecture, IT Sligo. 
Stacy Szymaszek is the author of the books Emptied of All Ships (2005), Hyperglossia (2009), hart island (2015), Journal of Ugly Sites and Other Journals (2016), which won the Ottoline Prize from Fence Books and was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award in 2017, and A Year From Today (2018). Her books Famous Hermits and The Pasolini Book will be published in 2022. She is the recipient of a 2014 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry, and a 2019 Foundation for Contemporary Arts grant in poetry. Szymaszek was the Director of The Poetry Project at St.Mark’s from 2007-18. Since then she was the Hugo Visiting Writer at the University of Montana-Missoula 2018-19, Poet-in Resident at Brown University, and Visiting Poet for the Fire Island Artist Residency. She has been a mentor for the Queer Art Mentorship, visiting faculty for Naropa University’s Summer Writing Program, and workshop teacher for Woodland Pattern, The Poetry Project, and Wendy’s Subway. She currently lives in the Hudson Valley region of NY. 
Eugenia Leigh is a Korean American poet and the author of Bianca (Four Way Books, forthcoming 2023) and Blood, Sparrows and Sparrows (Four Way Books, 2014). Her poems and essays have appeared in numerous publications including The Nation, Pleiades, Ploughshares, Poetry, Waxwing, and the 2017 Best of the Net Anthology. The recipient of Poetry’s 2021 Bess Hokin Prize as well as fellowships and awards from Poets & Writers Magazine, Kundiman, and elsewhere, Eugenia received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College.
.chisaraokwu. is an Igbo actor, poet, and healthcare futurist. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in GRIST, Obsidian, Zone3, Berkeley Poetry Review, Cider Press Review, Glass, Tinderbox and others. Thrice nominated for Sundress’ Best of Net (2019, 2020, 2021) and awarded writing fellowships and residencies with BANFF, Cave Canem, Tin House and Brooklyn Poets, she calls just about any beach home.
Shin Yu Pai is a poet, essayist and visual artist. She is the author of several books of poetry, including “Virga”(Empty Bowl, 2021), “ENSŌ” (Entre Ríos Books, 2020), “Sightings: Selected Works (2000-2005)” (1913 Press, 2007), “Aux Arcs” (La Alameda, 2013), “Adamantine” (White Pine, 2010), and “Equivalence” (La Alameda, 2003). She served as the fourth poet laureate of the city of Redmond from 2015 to 2017. She is a three-time fellow of MacDowell and has also been in residence at Taipei Artist Village, Soul Mountain, The Ragdale Foundation, Centrum, and The National Park Service. Her poetry films have screened at the Zebra Poetry Film Festival and the Northwest Film Forum’s Cadence video poetry festival. She lives and works in the Pacific Northwest.
Margo Taf Stever‘s latest of three full-length poetry collections are Cracked Piano (CavanKerry Press, 2019), which was shortlisted and received honorable mention for the 2021 Eric Hoffer Award Grand Prize, and The End of Horses, Broadstone Books, 2022. Her latest of four chapbooks is Ghost Moose (Kattywompus Press, 2019). Her poems have appeared in literary magazines including Verse Daily, Plant Human Quarterly, Cincinnati Review, Rattapallax, upstreet, Salamander, West Branch, Poet Lore, Blackbird, Poem-A-Day, poets.org, Academy of American Poets, and Prairie Schooner. She is currently an adjunct assistant professor in the Bioethics Department of the School of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University. Stever also teaches a poetry workshop at Children’s Village, a residential school for at-risk children and adolescents. She is founder of the Hudson Valley Writers Center and founding and current co editor of Slapering Hol Press.