Event Review: Hemingway's Summer Poetry Series Featuring Sarah Williams-Devereux, Christine Stroud, Daniela Buccilli, & Cameron Barnett
For the second time during this course, I was able to tune into Hemingway’s Summer Poetry Series at White Whale Bookstore. On Tuesday, July 25th, they held a wonderful evening of heartfelt poetry featuring Sarah Williams-Devereux, Christine Stroud, Daniela Buccilli, and Cameron Barnett.
Kristopher Collins, co-curator of Hemingway's Summer Poetry Series and Books Editor for Pittsburgh Magazine, began the evening with an introductory poem. He read Christopher Gilbert’s “Metaphor for Something That Plays Us: Remembering Eric Dolphy,” with the memorable line, “even the righteous tire of trying to get it right.”
Sarah Williams-Devereux was the first of the four poets to read her work. She is a poetry teacher for the Madwomen in the Attic workshops at Carlow University and an apprentice training instructor for Amherst Writers & Artists writing group leadership. Williams-Devereux presented a harrowing selection of poems, several from her forthcoming book, Of a Mother, which focuses on the passing of her mother. Her poems were incredibly raw, such as “Terminal Lucidity,” where she writes about the moment of clarity before her mother’s death. In a standout poem, “Equilibrium” she describes the moments after death in lines such as, “your body is still moving in places I can’t see” and “guided by forces bigger than the sorrow we share.” The emotion in each of Sarah Williams-Devereux’s poems was palpable. I could sense the love and care she felt for her mother in each line, along with her skillful crafting of her poems.
Following Williams-Devereux, Christine Stroud, Pittsburgh poet, and editor-in-chief of Autumn House Press, read poems from her current book in progress, The Island. Stroud is the author of Sister Suite and The Buried Return, and her poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Hobart, the Ninth Letter online, The Paterson Literary Review, Cimarron Review, and The Laurel Review. Stroud explained that her poems from The Island are heavily based on Eastern North Carolina, her hometown. As she read, her brilliant imagery shined throughout each poem. I was drawn to her first poem, “An Elegy, An Admission,” in which she read lines such as, “bones tucked in the branches” and “he threw his words into the ocean.” Her final poem, “The Artist” explores the experience of an artist trying, despite feeling hopeless: “We’re all trying to be understood I suppose, but all interpretation becomes demeaning.” Christine Stroud’s poems were thought-provoking, leaving me spinning her phrases and images in my mind long after she had read.
Next came Daniela Buccilli, a Pittsburgh teacher whose enthusiasm was evident the second she began to speak. She is the author of the chapbook What it Takes to Carry, and her poetry can be found in Paterson Review, Northern Appalachian Review, Cimarron Review, and Voices in the Attic anthology. Buccilli presented a variety of poems that were not in her book, as she spoke about her Italian heritage and history. My favorite poem she read, “We Messy You,” is a piece centered on her Italian mother, who mistranslated “messy” for “miss.” Buccilli read the list poem that ends with her mother on an airplane holding a crying infant and the line, “because she was embarrassed at how offensive we both were.” Daniela Buccilli creates poignant narratives within her poems, weaving fact and emotion together to create a complex portrait of her subject.
Cameron Barnett closed the evening with poems from his collection Murmur, forthcoming from Autumn House Press. Barnett is a Pittsburgh poet, teacher, and the Emerging Black Writer in Residence at Chatham University, as well as the author of The Drowning Boy’s Guide to Water (which I have read and cannot recommend enough!). His poems soar with metaphors, alliteration, and lyrical grace, as he uncovers the nuances of race for Black people in America. In Barnett’s poem, “Ghost Lessons,” he moves through his family history, how his grandmothers “pulled thread through Pittsburgh,” with “white-passing palms and pulses.” I was particularly drawn to his poem “Breath,” which is inspired by the fact that all babies are born with a hole in their hearts. He read powerful lines such as, “all our hearts once held trap doors that helped us slip past suffocation” and “your blood is an allograph of inhalation, a synonym, a murmur.” Cameron Barnett’s poems do not shy away from exploring the complexities of history and self, as his words sing with music and truth.
Hemingway’s Summer Poetry Series at White Whale Bookstore provided a meaningful evening of painful truths and beautiful language. Sarah Williams-Devereux, Christine Stroud, Daniela Buccilli, and Cameron Barnett each brought their distinct and earnest voices, offering a deep look into each of their worlds and hearts.
