 My name is Kim Bant, I'm the Artistic Director of the Last Nation Theater. And in its eighth year of home city, we're pleased to host the kick-off event this afternoon for this wonderful, wonderful celebration of poetry. I want to say a few words about our setting, seems appropriate. This is the set that's on the end process for a play called, and it was originally far, actually a third production of it, the first time we did it was 10 years ago. And it'll be the opening on the runs from April 20th to May 7th, and I think it's so appropriate because it's such a beautiful poetic piece, and here we are, open in the middle of home city events. A whole month long series of events, obviously. So, I just want to introduce Tom McCown, who's the Executive Director of the Kellogg Public Library, who's the organization that makes this all happen. It's all. Thank you, Kim. Then a little bit, we'll be talking about home city, some more. But first, I want to tell you, I do have my season's tickets for Lost Nation Theater, and I'll be here with you to line me up in a month, looking forward to it very much. And I want to thank Lost Nation and Kim and Kathleen very much for helping us today and on other events during the month. But before we get to poetry, first we have the Capitol Jazz Band, and poor cats get that trade. So, I'm Trumpet. We have Rene Savard from Montevillier High School, and base, Bruno John from Twin Field. Here, this kickoff is the first of 35 events that we have during the month of April, so it's really busy schedule. Lots of things going on. And of course, it takes a lot of people to make that happen. I can see some of them, but National Right, and, what, under my, and who, anybody? The money that Annie's got is every year. So, in this, and through the program, you can see the many local businesses who provide us with space and help us in a variety of other ways. We also have many volunteers. We have our continuing library volunteers, and we have some volunteers who help every year, specifically on home city, and we simply could not do this without the help of all of those people. We also want to, in particular, it's important to remember the many presenters we have, and we're very grateful to them for all that they participate in this, in a whining from beginning poets and published poets. So, that's great. In particular, I'd like to thank over here, Rachel Seneschal, who's the life leader of the city several years ago, eight years ago, and she has been the driving force behind it each year. So, in your programs, there are a lot of things, if you haven't gotten one already, in the center, there's a calendar for the month, it's nicely coded for the different types of events. Before that, there are three pages, lists, thoughts and stuff. Yesterday, I saw Rachel, I saw a woman who was reading a poem that was posted onto the mark of my calendar. I can't do all 35, but I do a bunch of them. So, in a moment, I'm going to turn this over to Marjorie Ryerson. And Marjorie is a writer and poet, vocal author, former state legislator, and she also, since the 1990s, has been teaching at Bredlow. Now, to put this in perspective, some of you know what Bredlow is and some of you don't, but Robert Frost used to teach at Bredlow. So, Marjorie Ryerson, you've probably taught that longer than he did. Thank you. Everybody, I'm delighted to be here and I'm very proud and honored to introduce our current state poet laureate. He is the eighth poet laureate from Vermont and he is an award-winning professor and author. His books include six books of poetry, I hope I have that count right, the 2015 book of the year. That's interesting. His 2011 book, The Double Truth, which was named one of the best poetry books that year by the Boston Globe. He is the author of the 2005 Night Moving, the 2003 Sharp Golden Thorn and the 2011 Speaking in Turn, a book for which he collaborated with the recently deceased poet, Tony Sanders. I think he died in 2015. Jardin Newhart's first book of poems, The Sleep in the Fire, was released in 1990. His book of essays and interviews with seven senior American poets, Dalhett Cannell, Donald Hall, Maxine Hewlin, Jack Gilbert, Ruth Stone, Lucille Tifden and Robert Bly is titled Sad Friends, Groundlovers, Staple Songs, Conversations and Reflections on 20th Century American Poets and that significant 2011 book addressed key literary figures around the United States, two of which were Poet Laureates in Vermont. Got White and Allen Ruth Stone. Jardin Newhart's poems have appeared in many publications, some of them include The Kenan Review, Plou Shares, The Antioch Review, The American Poetry Review, The American Scholar, The Ohio Review, The New Republic, The New York Times, The Best American Poetry and The Pushkart Prize Collection. It's extensive, this man's accomplishments. He's the co-founder and former director of the New England College's MFA program in poetry and he is a trustee of the Ruth Stone Trust. Mr. DeNord teaches English and created writing at Providence College where he is a professor of English. He lives in Westminster West with his wife Liz and he kindly came up to Montpelier last night because of the storm so that he could be here with us today. I want to thank him for that effort to please join me in welcoming Vermont's gifted, accomplished and deeply inspiring poet Laureate. It's very humbling. I'm very happy to be here and I think I can just listen to that jazz band all evening and happily. I'm going to read something for them a little later. I just decided that I wrote on my way up here before even hearing them and then I realized that it was for them. I don't know of another state that celebrates the arts and poetry as capital in the way that Vermont does. It's the little big state that's so full of heart and courage and creativity. I really can't think of another state that is this enlightened and this creative and I think courageous, I think that's a key word. I'm going to start by reading a poem, I'm going to put this down, for David Bundel who I loved and sat right here several a month a year ago listening to his tribute of David sitting right here and I know how beloved he is here and I love his poetry, wrote a tribute to him after he died and felt like I didn't do it full justice. So I thought I would just start with reading this poem about winter here in the northern section, in the northern section, the northern part of Vermont. December 10th, December 10th, just simply that. How do people survive? How do people survive here in the winter? I know that was one of David's themes often. I saw the first cardinal this morning in the snow outside my window at the feeder and was tempted to call him my heart for his color and shape and hunger. But no, not yet. We're at a little red banded at home in the north where the sky conspires with a cold to form a blue so deep you can see straight through. Where somehow the voles dig deep enough to survive the frost and the fox grows thin but lives on bones to march. Where the deer eat cones and bears digest themselves in the dark. Where all things live, in fact, with a fear that they might die tonight from the terrible cold and lack. Although they have no word for it, only the songs they sing we call the music of life. I watched the cardinal devour seeds by the dozens and then fly off, no less diminished to grow hungry again in a matter of minutes, to remain on the feeder for a couple of seconds as a ghost of the bird that shames the winter. Can you write it? I also often have any idea why they write about what they write about. And I find myself writing all the time about animals and the birds outside my window as well as living in the remote landscape. This is a short poem simply called Small Black Eye. The sparrow lay stunned but still alive in the periwinkle. A victim of the window that appears as air in the kingdom of birds. I picked her up and placed her wing against my face if she came around all the world. Sky, grass, trees, shown inside her small black eye that was perfectly still as it stared at me like a stone that could see. Wow. That was a puppy school for about 10 years. And I had a student there who was kind of a mystic. She used to see things that no one else could see. And I saw her one day standing in front of the dining hall just looking straight up at the sky. Of course, I thought she might have been on something. She called me over and said, Look. And I looked, I didn't see a darn thing. And she says, you have to really look. And so I guess I'll let the poem explain the rest. The geese. Look. Said the girl who saw things. Where? I asked. I see nothing. 12 o'clock, it doesn't bees like threads. You have to look. Then suddenly there, straight up, like floaters in the blue, 12 chevron scissoring the veil. Too distant to hear, although I did, I did. And not only hear, but see as well, clear, unquenchable fire on the wings of those at the lead. You also, I said, are among them in line of flame, fluid and effusing, curiously floating. See how quickly they vanished, she said, at the sound of our voices. And then they were gone by flames that had burned a hole in the sky and passed right through. As Martin said, I got to know Woodstone and as well as several other of these senior poets quite well in my interview. And after an interview with Ruth, who lived in Goshen, near Middlebury, I visited her about once every two weeks. She moved up from Middlebury to Brooklyn where her daughter Marshall lived. And she, at that point, she was almost completely blind and no longer felt compelled to take care of herself. So Martin did that for her. But I used to sit by her bedside and just let her have a photographic memory. She could recite all of her poems from memory. But you'd have to give her the title first. She'd say, you said, would you say that poem called, no, you'd have to give her the first line out of the title. So I would say, please recite curtains. And she said, how's it go? And I was, you know, I'd read the first lines. And then just the whole poem would come out. It was amazing. But anyway, I was always trying to get her up. She was 93 or 94 just to walk around a little bit to exercise. So this is about that. For five months I tried to get Ruth out of bed to sit in her chair. Then maybe stand for a while. No, she said. I don't have the strength anymore in my legs. And besides, I'm blind. But I had read her poems and knew how truthful she was as a liar. And so continued to urge her to rise like the paralytic from his pallet and walk at least sit up and move around before her muscles quit. And then one day her granddaughter Nora, the milliner, came in and asked her to the milliner. Came in and asked her to try one of her hats. A 1940s felt classic with a feather. And wear it as she once did a similar hat 60 years ago when Walter was still alive. And she did. Taking her time to swing her legs like arms onto the floor and stand. Then walk again as if posed in the parlor and smile for the camera until she could smile a little over and walk back to her bright dark room and slap. So are they still sugaring up here? Is sugaring season still going on? Yeah. It must be getting near the end. Yeah, it is. It's still going on in Westminster West. But I think it's getting near the end. It should be quite a bit down there, especially when I work to, as I mentioned at the Petty School, to work with a fellow who was wise and witty and pretty curved at the same time. So I had asking big questions about everything from sugaring to life and he often said nothing. But I thought I would memorialize him in this poem. At the Socratic Sugar House. I said I said the steam is like a ghost in the sugar house. And you said that didn't mean anything to you since you didn't believe in ghosts. So I said how about a cloud then? And you said but it isn't a cloud, either it's steam. Why do you want to make it something it isn't? I was only imagining I said don't you ever imagine what's forward. To see things I see plenty it's dangerous to see more than what's there. But if you don't, you don't see what's there. Like ghosts? Well yeah, ghosts and other things. If I said to you that the steam is a ghost that haunts this house, what would you say? I'd say you're crazy. What's real is here in every place else. I'm not saying it isn't. I think the same but those things you can't see. You've lost me now. You better keep your mind on the pan. Too much thinking ruins the syrup. I'm looking back and ahead at the same time when I stare at the sap. My mind's the fire that boils the sap that turns the syrup. That sounds nice enough. But crazier still than what you said before about the ghost and clouds. Now run that off before it burns. Do you think that someone who thought that steam was like nothing else in the world invented syrup? That's what I mean by looking back. Wondering, but someone saw something that wasn't yet real but hidden there. So when I look at the steam and see a ghost I'm only dreaming of course. I know it's steam. But I'm also saying there are things inside of things. The world is the way it is. Always knowable in the end. It's hard with evidence if you look close enough. I looked at something once and called it sugar by mistake. A little sweetness we get comes from so much work. 40 gallons of sap and one of syrup. You look at the steam and see a ghost. I look at the steam and see my grief. We're close enough in that I guess. So let's leave it there. Either way, it comes to nothing in the air above the roof. There's a few more. There's coyotes in our meadow. 20 more in the meadow. I ran down buried my face on their sides. Smelt their urine and sex. Ran beside them. Alas, descended. Conversed with souls, both human and animal. Read the book of sticks from beginning to end. Rose up again in the form of coyote. Killed a deer. Pulled muscle from bone. Slept in the snow. Howl at the moon. Please. After all of them. I know some of them aren't that great. Let's see. I have to believe that. This is a poem called The Beavers. Those four creatures that are often victimized and reduced because of the damage they do with folks that run into the landscape. But without Beavers we wouldn't have the landscape that we have. So, now we've invented what? Beaver deceivers. Have you seen those? They allow Beavers to survive in their natural habitat without continuing to build destructive dams. So I was going to call this a foreign policy. But I decided to keep it as the Beavers. They called the pasture my neighbor explaining when we met this morning at the property line that divides his field from mine which is also a meadow. Although I call it a pasture when talking to him. Since a meadow is not a place his cows would roam but a patch of paradise where picnics and lovers. We had just been walking around to see what damage winter had done to the fence and trees at the marker and greeted each other. They broached the weather and other things regarding spring the sap its grade, its run the snow the herd, the Beavers they're heading this way as we speak he said I saw them in a dream last night. Spirits I thought come back to teach the mysteries of building houses in war but not it instead like a dashboard doll elders in the ruse of Beavers with a genius for damning I wanted to tell him but couldn't stop nodding in agreement with his denial of the fun he has each summer exploding their houses with TNT then shooting them from behind a wall pests he called me when he really meant such perfect moving targets for catching in the hairs of his 243. Good luck I said in a tone he didn't catch as I continued down the road giant maples to the stream to see if I could find some sign of them as I had in previous years the prince of little hands in the loam in eaten trees but nothing yet just the cold dark water of Sackett's Brook beneath the silence of a cloudless sky where a red-tailed hawk besieged by sparrows louder cry than another I'll read just a few more I think I've ever read this one it's called what keeps the salt what keeps the salt here living there against the mountain with smoke ascending and shingles missing and car on blocks and bacon spitting and TV tuned to the man digressing an old dog pissing on weeping willow and pickup missing driver's window salts the roof for the day to taste with cobalt tongue his night descends in winter haste without an evening so I think I'll read this last poem because which is brand new in the spirit of jazz and in the spirit of these young folks who were about to to read I would like to teach them and for emphasizing we may already know this that poetry is ongoing you just keep writing it and cropping them down it's jazz until you maybe get to a point where maybe or it sounds sounds okay so I don't think I've ever done this just read the poem I just wrote literally on the way up here so I'll conclude daringly with this and then introduce these wonderful young writers who are here to read a few of their poems from the Youth Writers Project this is called The Host solitary and also infinite and is an old epigraph silence listens but doesn't broadcast anonymous so I hope I can read my writing here untold stories play inside her studio where no one can hear but she alone the host of her own show the one who sits in the dark as if the whole world could hear since what she's feeling is similar to what everyone else is feeling also in talking to themselves about but in their own words that are different different which is difficult for her to understand at first but isn't after a while after she repeats several words to herself and sees how shy they are and ready to fade in the light like the moon for failing to say what they mean in the dark where they cry out their names like bird songs more sound than words but rich in tone tone which is why music comes to mind and begins to play somewhere within range of her ear and she wonders where where in the world is coming from that beautiful music that bird song composed by her feelings and played by angels who are also birds angels at their cellos horns and guitars angels at their flutes saxophones and pianos as if they had been there in their seats all along these virtuosos came into the world thank you so I'm going to introduce some young folks who are here from the news writers project and I first want to thank the organizers and the directors of this wonderful project Doug Mayo and Jeff Cavalt who have been doing this for several years I don't know are you here is Jeff great and I think this is correct me if I'm wrong but is there another program like this in the country I don't know of another one quite like it and it's Genesis is also remarkable a bunch of folks got together and funded this several years ago and essentially discovered in the business community that people young folks weren't writing very well and then organized formed this wonderful project organization called the youth writers project to improve writing but not only improve writing but to improve creative writing and it's flourished since then so now students from all over New England come to this and attend meetings here attend workshops here at Vermont College of Fine Arts what three or four times a year yeah we have conferences there and also YoungWritersProject.org on the web all over the world this is amazing this is really amazing I commend the effort and creativity so I'm just going to say a few words about these poems and these young poets will be coming up here in a few minutes the late Brazilian poet Carlos Grumman Andrade wrote I'm working on a song that will awaken men and women and make children sleep in his famous called Friendly Song these lines resounded so powerfully among the citizenry of Brazil that they ended up on the country's bank notes in the 1980s can you imagine a poem on the dollar bill that's what happened in Brazil in the 1980s Andrade's wish strikes the reader with an irony that captures both the hypnotic effect of poetry's verbal music a music that carries language into the unconscious where it melds with memory and the stunning quality of poetry that wakes men and women is both lullaby and alarm the poems you're about to hear from several members of the Youth Writers Project are full of lullaby and alarm in their impressive attempts to capture the mystery of the other as beloved to redefine peace in the midst of American violence to gaze at a disease with searing honesty to perceive the centrifuge of white paint to recognize the importance of catching yourself despite the promise of another to do so to witness to the fact that style and intellect can coexist and to support a friend by withholding an answer that isn't her own so no further ado here I'm very happy to introduce these folks and I'll go in the order of this on the sheet here is Emily here is Emily Estee Emily, you ready? Okay, come on down Hi, I'm Emily Hass I'm from Marsville, Vermont and my first piece is called The Importance of Pronouns He had soft brown eyes and a forgiving soul He had a hug that consumes me and warmth He had lips that curled up at the ends and dimples when he laughed He had a voice more comforting than bony wiper records at night He wore recycled shoes and a cross necklace He also wore embarrassment between our interlocking fingers He kept secrets within our late night walks of me dropping him off 10 feet before his house He lived in a white house which I would never see from inside the labeled girlfriend tattooed on my shoulder He laughed because my existence was his skeleton in the closet She was afraid what her parents would think and my final piece is called Peace A Concept There are people falling from the sky The sight reflects in a child's eyes those viewers as a smoke chokes out the picture and everybody is crying and lying The child would never know what it was like to live in a world where people weren't afraid to go outside Peace is defined as freedom from or the sensation of war or violence In my mind it means to walk through my school's hallways without fear it means not second guessing going to the movie theater it means trusting the kid in class with a smile Peace is one of my favorite words but it's never fit quite right in my mouth The word peace has always seemed like America's punchline to a bad joke When I was young I was at ease because I fought to keep peace within and the enemies out but I learned that was pretty tricky when the enemy was a young man with a gun How can we expect peace to the rest of the world when me or killing each other We care about religion, race, and politics as our city streets become war zones and nightclubs and elementary schools become burial grounds and we still try to turn a blind eye to the violence but how can we deny when 15 minutes was the amount of time it took before the first shooting took place in 2016 Children are growing up in a society known to violence and ignorance manifests itself in our silence Our work is spread out in front of us but first we must be taught how to pick up a shovel Is Eva Rawlings here You are I'm Eva Rawlings I'm South Burlington and this is actually my first time ever reading any of my own poetry so my first piece is called Look at her scars They're not mine Wrists smell of blood and of perfume and wine It stings me to think how one's eyes get so cold Wrinkles her brow makes her look far too old Watch as her friends try to help but they pry So she pushes them out just to make herself cry Tosses her pizza her soup down the drain The thought of one bite she believes is her being so lonely sleeping all day I wish I could tell her she's wasting away that things will get better as everyone said that this tear spot won't stay on the side of her bed there will be a day that she'll sleep without whales that someday her cheeks will not look quite so pale when her limbs feel so weak mine too sick to go on I wish she would know that it soon will be gone that she will find someone who wants her to eat who won't be repulsed when they go to the beach that one day they'll panic the worry and fear he will talk over only his voice show here the scars and the tears and the ribs poking out I couldn't be that I mean look at me now because now my mind is so wonderfully free I just can't believe that that girl once was me my second piece is called bus stop it's 437 and the bus stop is empty the wind blows candy wrappers higher than I hold my head so what did men walk by there goes my breath it's getting dark winter is coming the sky is milky and bruised traffic dissipates but the smell of petroleum and fried food stays a man lingers in his face with sharp edges and peppery subtle robust legs to catch me built arms to hold me down he holds a cigarette between his teeth blows grey smoke at me menacingly he sits on the bench the opposite end tips with his weight wishing it flung me up into cotton candy clouds or grey ones thick with rain anywhere but here shadows become constant and cars no longer see my glowing apprehensive eyes he looks my way I don't breathe he stands the bench creaks every scenario I can imagine I cannot defend my own consent the bus arrives he steps on pulls away I cannot bring myself to move maybe the next one and my final piece is called Skinny and it's kind of a slam type poem so I'm experimenting with that at the age of 5 I was aware of society's body expectations the other little girls were skinny and I was just praying to have been born like one of them our nation was already poisoning my mind with images on billboards of girls with collarbones and thigh gaps bigger was bad better was thinner not telling me that those were the girls that were puking their dinner their smiles so bright I was too blinded to see their eyes dim of light mouthfuls of misery muted by our society so accepting of mental illness we teach our daughters to grow up to look like someone with an eating disorder when I was 15 I became one of them so insecure I was sure I'd be cured by eating less than I should so I could be happy like that because none of it matters as long as you don't get fat there was an infestation in the gray of my brain like a fungus that medicine couldn't treat trust me I tried I was just another adolescent on antidepressants like trying to treat a toxic virus with antibiotics but there was a voice in my head telling me not to go to bed stay up until you're so weak you fall asleep from doing so many crunches that you crunch in half you're never good enough never enough when each day there's less of you always too fat even if you starve your brain and eat so little your gut aches and gnaws at the line of your stomach but it's better than it taking one more bite of your self worth here's a fun game would you rather have a stomach ache or a heartache you frustrate the ones you love keep resisting help keep restricting stop you're addicted like an alcoholic to the drink that makes his liver throb and they ask why don't you just like not drink why don't you just like eat you crave the moment of safety and comfort you feel when your stomach is empty or you throw out your sandwich or go for a run when you can barely hold yourself up on your fragile legs because you need to burn the calories to get thinner to be happy because when you're 115 you'll be happy when you're 110 you'll be happy when you're 105 four three two one blast off but you don't have the energy it is sucked up by the voice screaming in your mind the infection that spreads with each and every compulsive exercise every restriction the voice grew as I shrunk for I could feel it weighing at the back of my head like a heavy magnet pulling my skull to the hard ground so all I could see was the bleak sky the um crying parents staring blankly can't look them in the eye will you break down and tell them that they're right but if you tell them that they're right you'll have to gain weight yet you know your mind reeks of poisonous thoughts you feel like there's no way out so the next time you see a skinny model with ribs poking out poke the thoughts out of your mind because that is what it feels like to have an eating disorder alone and hungry feels nothing like winning but at least you'll be skinny Elizabeth Magnum Elizabeth Magnum Elizabeth here the storm got better so Maisie Newberry Maisie Newberry is here welcome Maisie I'm going to try I'm Maisie and this is my piece the phoenix pink lips pretty face bloodshot eyes and heartbreak heart smell no flame we rise we fall we come from nothing at all we're born from soot and dirt but when we're alive we're beautiful even when it hurts and everyone knows our story because it's one of great resilience everyone knows the story of the fiery red phoenix you're running ahead and behind you lost your voice I think I lost my mind from wondering what you think and wondering what you feel that smile on your face I wonder if it's real I want to know everything what you think about yourself do you wish you were invisible do you wish you were someone else is there a place for you somewhere who just don't know how to get to do you know if that place exists if you don't or are you just an optimist I want to know all about who you are I want to know whether you're happy with it I want to know what you think when I'm not around and I want you to know that you're worth it because everyone else is so fake and they lie and they steal they try to hide their mistakes cover up and conceal but what if I told you that I'm not like the others forever because the world is so alive and so full of color the last thing I want is for you to miss it because you are a thinker an impossible realist I'm more of a believer a radical feelist I'm messy and impulsive I don't like to think because I've got no control I can't choose who I love I can't choose where I go the only choice I ever made was going against the flow I was so much better are you ready for another round because I can't stop dancing when there's no one around with my head still spinning stuck in the clouds my eyes wide open my feet off the ground so let me go float up to the sky don't ever let me come down let me go or hold on tight you've got to make your choice because I need to know if this is love these chests create us rising from the ashes like a newborn phoenix before we fizzle out like a dampened flame because I'll always be the fire to your torrential reign the perfect match set to burn out again and again and again ashes to ashes dust to dust a tragic story of love and lust but the burns won't heal like before without fire and rain together anymore I thought that we were born to shine I thought that we'd never have to think I didn't know what mattered what I said I thought it was all about feeling I thought that we were born to shine because when I was looking at you I saw all the stars in the sky in fact you made the envious moon see brother drab and dull and I wonder how you stay so sad when you're so beautiful I hope it's not my fault that you're hurting inside but I'm not sure what to do after all that I've tried you don't want me to take care of you you want me to make you feel alive I'm sorry love but it's too cold outside the wind is too strong for a phoenix to fly so goodbye phoenix phoenix goodbye I'm also from middlebury and I'm switching up my order in my pieces so we'll see how this goes the first one that I'm going to read is called Falling I am holding on tight gripping the metal of some monkey bar so hard that my knuckles turn white so long that I don't feel it any longer and my stomach lurches only occasionally when I look down below at that long long invigorating terrifying drop I cannot wait I can only wait so I'm holding on so that when I finally let go I'll feel it all the more and the next one is called Into the Light he said he'd catch me if I fell yet he only raised me higher and when I fell I caught myself it's Shannon here Shannon Ridal Shannon Ridal from St. Albans and the first piece I'm going to read is called Ombudsman I am holding on I am holding on I am holding on I am holding on I am holding on I am holding on I am holding on and the first piece I'm going to read is called On This Black Night On This Black Night the stars are soulless eyes staring down at heartless bodies demons slug around every dark lonely corner children's pale pink flesh metamorphosizes into scales On This Black Night death echoes under covered bridges and through open windows sinister rhythms flow out of trees and breathe the malevolent anecdotes of merciless creatures into listening ears On This Black Night fatigued minds stroll down somber streets tongues lay still inside moist caves silence is the soundtrack on This Black Night The second poem I'm going to read is called In the Shadow of Doubt You move so swiftly so surely as you take your ascent up the stairway not one glance down to the rickety panels of wood sucks together only by nails I wonder how you stand outside the shadow of every doubt I look in awe as you escape the darkness of uncertainty and obscurity you put your slim fragile body in the hands of the steps that screen with every added ounce of pressure as you step with confidence upwards how you trust such a structure with unwavering conviction I do not know for I am still looking up at you from the bottom of the staircase wishing that I could trust as you do The last poem I'm going to read is called Hidden Will you respect me if you can see me is your focus stolen because my knees peek out from under my skirt does my makeup diminish my ability to converse hold my knowledge captive your eyes wander past my intelligence and towards my body tell me is a mind's worth determined by the plainness of its attire style and intellect can coexist and so can we Dan Gregory I'm Dan Gregory also from St. Albans my first piece is independent she stared at me eyes sad and watery heart torn partially undecided on if we should tear completely she watches me stand awkwardly pretending to think with my hand resting on her shoulder comforting me as much as her she expects me to have the answer to every problem she waits for me to tell her the solution before she boldly turns it down to think of her own my last piece is called a lonely mind watching the tide pull in and out the water scattered with bubbles fizzing like tonic he sat in his favorite chair staring out of the hole in his cottage where a window used to be eyes darting around watching the birds above float randomly on the sky plastic bags caught in the wind a warm smile spread across his face coming in the cool ocean breeze one bird having just received a promotion the man thought flew evenly above the rest shouting out commands have I left anyone out I think that's it so let's give them all the youth writers project thank you first of all I want to thank you young writers the poetry is totally amazing thank you so much for coming from all corners of Vermont to be here today on a snowy day today's program was sponsored by Los Mission Theater I think Kim Benton, Kathleen I'm not sure where you are it was wonderful to come and meet with them and ask if we could come here and have this today's program and it's an excellent place and this program was sponsored by Polntown Randolph and I want to recognize Jen and Watten one of the organizers of Polntown Randolph as well as Bonjour Ryerson and Megan was unable to be here today she also is an organizer of Polntown Randolph and of course, Polm City I want to invite you first I'm looking in the audience and I want to know how many of you have a poem hanging in Polm City this year that's really great and there are some presenters in the audience as well I'm looking at George Longenecker who's doing both a workshop and a presentation at TWA Art Gallery so I invite you to join us next door for a reception please look at your program, Polm City program we have lots of events throughout the month and we hope to see you every day thank you very much