While down in Cambridge last August with a team of Portland poets for the semi-finals of the National Poetry Slam, Tricia Henley Pryce says, she never saw more than one woman up on stage at a time. It occurred to Pryce, poet and proprietor of Mama's CrowBar, that here were myriad men performing poems about their mothers' abusive relationships, their girlfriends' abortions, and that these were women's stories. But where were all the women?Pryce and some like-minded friends started a women's poetry workshop, and soon afterward got involved with the Women of the World Poetry Slam, with Portland poet Sarah Lynn Herklots winning the opportunity to represent Maine at the national competition. Now Pryce has conceived a dramatic performance, Weaving Conversations with the Sky, to celebrate female poets from both history and our own modern Portland. The show, which runs twice on Monday, February 13, also serves as a fund raiser to send slam artist Herklots to Denver as Maine's representative in the 2012 Women of the World Poetry Slam.
The show will open with renowned female poets of yore portrayed in vignettes by local actresses, including Shannara Gillman as ancient Greek sensualist Sappho, Lulu Hawkes as African-American slave Phyllis Wheatley, and Tara Haskell as the conscience-driven Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The Brontë sisters will also be represented — with Vanessa Romanoff as Anne, Heather Elizabeth Irish as Charlotte, and Jessica McKee as Emily — as well as Brigid Sinclair's preternatural Belle of Amherst, Emily Dickinson, and a battle-in-verse between Sylvia Plath (April Singley) and Anne Sexton (Mariah Bergeron). Act two will feature local poets, including Herklots, as well as Stonecoast MFA director Annie Finch, playwright Carolyn Gage, Portland slam poet Heidi Therrien, and host of WMPG's Mama Africa Show Keita Whitten.
Weaving Conversations with the Sky | Feb 13 @ 1 & 7 pm | at the St. Lawrence Arts Center, Portland | $12 matinee; $15 evening; $10 seniors/students | 207.775.5568 | stlawrencearts.org
Related:
Exploring deep within, Interview: Maya Angelou shares her wisdom, Lit snobs, hot librarians, and the rise of the literary tattoo, More 
- Exploring deep within
Hannah Holmes, the Maine-born, Portland-dwelling science writer, naturalist, and friend to all animals has turned her lens deeply inward in her latest book, The Well-Dressed Ape: A Natural History of Myself .
- Interview: Maya Angelou shares her wisdom
Though poet, writer, performer, teacher, and director Maya Angelou has made several visits to Rhode Island over the past two decades, her words of wisdom are always pointed reminders to those who have heard her speak before and wake-up calls to those who haven't.
- Lit snobs, hot librarians, and the rise of the literary tattoo
Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich was sitting down for a meal at Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, when she found herself under critique.
- Whitcomb's legacy
It is unlikely that James Whitcomb Riley, a turn-of-the-century poet for a short time considered the heir to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ever envisioned his work accompanied by music quite like this.
- Performing words written en route to Auschwitz
It is barely conceivable how one woman, at a way station en route to Auschwitz, wrote so ardently of purple lupine.
- Marathon man
"Most poets can't tie their own shoes," says Jim Behrle. "They don't know what time it is."
- From away, here to stay: Out-of-towners settle down in Maine
I'm becoming a hick. Or so I'm being told more and more lately.
- Rhode Island’s First Family of Poetry
Husband and wife Keith and Rosmarie Waldrop will be giving a reading at the Providence Central Library, on Washington Street, on Sunday, April 11 at 2 pm. That’s no small matter for poetry lovers.
- Making change
John Sinclair’s poem “Ask Me Now” leaves little question about the poet’s values.
- Photos [NSFW]: Naked Girls Reading at the Coolidge
Hey, our books are up here.
- In the same boat
It's summertime in Maine, a sweet and all-too-short season that generally makes living here the other nine or 10 months worth it. Except that this year, sun and warmth have apparently decided that, like access to the credit markets, they won't be available to the masses.
- Less
Topics:
This Just In
, Portland, Poetry, literature, More
, Portland, Poetry, literature, Emily Bronte, Phyllis Wheatley, Anne Bronte, Charlotte Bronte, African-American, Sappho, Shannara Gillman, Less
