March 19, 2020 | Poetry Café Bellas Artes

Three Inspired Poets to Read at March Poetry Café

By Maia Williams

Three inspired poets with roots in San Miguel de Allende will read at the Poetry Café Bellas Artes on March 19, 5:00 PM.

After growing up in New York and the Berkshires, Anne Damrosch has spent most of her life trying to get herself “back to the garden.” She has homesteaded off the grid six miles up an unplowed road. She has worked as a midwife’s apprentice and as a pediatric nurse at Hôpital Albert Schweitzer in rural Haiti. Finally settling in Vermont, she worked for 25 years in home health and developed a practice in therapeutic play. Anne regards writing poetry as the ultimate form of therapeutic play, and since children are natural poets and storytellers, she hopes some of their magic has rubbed off on her. Her poems have appeared in a number of literary magazines including Nimrod, New Millennium Writings, and The Baltimore Review. Her chapbook, Entering the Story, was published in 2012 by Finishing Line Press. She is inspired and grateful for regular poetry readings in San Miguel.

Native New Yorker Joan Hall is a pioneer in the field of collage and assemblage illustration. She has been exhibited in galleries and museums worldwide, including the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Museo Tamayo in Mexico City, and Galleria Intersecciòn at Fabrica La Aurora in San Miguel. Along with careers as a mime, teacher, artist, and lecturer, Joan has also been writing poetry since she was a child. Her book Journey to Somewhere, published in October 2019, is a collection of those poems. She was a winner of the Miriam Chaiken Foundation Award for poetry.

A native of Massachusetts, Catherine Marenghi is an award-winning poet and memoirist. Her new poetry book Breaking Bread was published by Finishing Line Press in January 2020. Her poetry has appeared in Crossroads, Solamente en San Miguel, Sisyphus, Peregrine Journal, Italian Americana, Mobius, Conclave, and other journals and anthologies. She is also the author of Glad Farm: A Memoir (2016), an acclaimed story of poverty, loss and resilience, and the power of a house to shape our destiny. She earned an M.A., B.A. in English from Tufts University, and she has studied poetry under Denise Levertov, X.J. Kennedy, Richard Blanco, Judyth Hill, and others.

The next Poetry Café on April 16, 2020, will be an Open Mic. All are welcome to read up to four minutes. To claim one of 12 available time slots, poets are asked to arrive by 4:30 PM and sign in.

Founded in January 2016, Poetry Café Bellas Artes typically meets the third Thursday of the month, September through April, and also holds special events. The all-volunteer organization presents local and visiting poets, both established and emerging, sharing their work in a convivial setting.

Please arrive a few minutes early. Seating is limited.