Our nature preserves are open to the public 365 days per year from sunrise to sunset, providing natural places that offer peace and respite for all. Willistown Conservation Trust owns and manages Hartman Meadow, Ashbridge, Kirkwood, Kestrel Hill and Rushton Woods Preserves. We maintain these lands to preserve and enhance … Learn more about our nature preserves.
Fireside Nature Poetry Reading
Join us for a cozy Sunday afternoon by the fire with local author Catherine Staples! She will lead us in a reading from her new book of poems called VERT, which highlights the beauty and anchoring power of place. Filled with evocative imagery of owls, songbirds, land, and seascapes it also emphasizes the deep animal connections that make us human. We will enjoy some treats and bird-friendly coffee from Gryphon Coffee Co., one of our Bird Friendly Coffee Coalition partners!
VERT will be available for purchase at this event from Main Point Books.
More about VERT: Catherine Staples grew up in Massachusetts and it’s there, in New England woods, meadows, and Cape Cod coasts, that the loss of her brother plays out as a quest across space and time: from a weathervane in Madison Square Park to a rusty pump in the mountains, from words etched on nineteenth-century glass to the track of skates on the Charles River. Place is at the heart of the transformation of loss. So, too, are myths and the lives of New England’s early naturalists. Henry David Thoreau’s narrative echoes and enlarges hers. He, too, lost a brother and found his way by tuning ear, eye, and stride to “the living earth,” a new way of seeing things. Vert is an old word in danger of being lost or misunderstood. “In English forest law,” it’s “everything that grows and forms a green leaf, serving as cover for deer.” It’s suggestive of habitat, our imperiled earth, the small spinney of a brother’s memory.
About the Author: Catherine Staples is the author of Vert, The Rattling Window, and Never a Note Forfeit. Her poems have appeared in Academy of American Poets, Kenyon Review, Poetry, The Southern Review, The Yale Review, and others. Honors include the Guy Owen Prize, McGovern Poetry Prize, Walter E. Dakin Fellowship from Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and residencies at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Annaghmakerrig, Ireland. She teaches in the Honors and English programs at Villanova University.
This is an ACCESS-friendly event. If you are a current ACCESS card holder, please use the ACCESS option at checkout when registering.
