Dorchester Center for the Arts Celebrates National Poetry Month

Dorchester Center for the Arts will host a “Poetry and Prosecco Sunday Soiree” on April 28 in celebration of National Poetry Month. Beginning at 3:00 p.m. in the Main Gallery, the event will include readings from three noted poets: Linda Blaskey, Le Hinton, and Sue Ellen Thompson.

Linda Blaskey is both a poet and prose writer. She is editor at Quartet, an online poetry journal featuring the work of women fifty and over; poetry/interview editor emerita of Broadkill Review, and past coordinator of the Dogfish Head Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in Best New Poets 2014, and North Carolina’s “Poetry on the Bus” project. She is the author of the prize-winning chapbook, Farm, the poetry collection, White Horses, and co-author of the poetry collections, Walking the Sunken Boards, and Season of Harvest. Her short story “The Haircut” was selected for dramatic presentation by Philadelphia’s InterAct Theatre. She is the recipient of three Fellowship Grants from DDOA, including the 2022 Masters in Literature: Poetry.

Poet and teacher, Le Hinton, is the author of seven collections including, most recently, Elegies for an Empire (Iris G. Press, 2023) and Sing Silence (2018). His work has been widely published and can be found in The Best American Poetry 2014, the Baltimore Review, the Skinny Poetry Journal, the Progressive Magazine, Little Patuxent Review, Pleiades, the Summerset Review, and elsewhere. His poems have received multiple nominations for the Pushcart Prize. His poem “Epidemic” won the Baltimore Review’s 2013 Winter Writers Contest. In 2014 it was honored by The Pennsylvania Center for the Book, and in 2021 it was featured on the WPSU program, “Poetry Moment.” His poem, “Our Ballpark,” can be found outside Clipper Magazine Stadium in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, incorporated into Derek Parker’s sculpture Common Thread.

Sue Ellen Thompson is the author of six books, most recently SEA NETTLES: NEW & SELECTED POEMS (Grayson Books, 2022) and the editor of The Autumn House Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry (1st ed.). She has won a Pushcart Prize, the Pablo Neruda/Nimrod Hardman Award, two individual artist’s grants from the State of CT, and a Pulitzer Prize nomination. A resident of Oxford for many years, Thompson received the 2010 Maryland Author Award from the Maryland Library Association.

Each poet will read from their work, offer Q and A, and have books available for signing following the presentations. Complimentary refreshments will be available. Admission is free, donations welcome to support the summer youth programs.