Bringing poetry to Poultney

 

Local author David Mook stands in front of the Stone Valley Arts building, the site of a community “favorite poem” reading April 21 in Poultney, Vt. A companion event, Poultney Poetry Downtown, will display poems in the windows of local businesses in celebration of National Poetry Month.Joan K. Lentini photo

 

By STACEY MORRIS
Contributing writer

POULTNEY, Vt.

As he has done for the past 19 years, David Mook spent a good chunk of the winter planning April’s local celebration of National Poetry Month.

A poet and writer who began teaching part time at Castleton University in 2005, Mook organized his first “Favorite Poem” community poetry reading that year at the Pawlet Public Library. He modeled the event after a project launched in the late 1990s by Robert Pinsky, then the U.S. poet laureate, as a way to foster public appreciation of poetry.

That first year in Pawlet, Mook recalled, nine people gathered to recite poems ranging from Psalm 121 to Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken.”

“The idea was to share poems that people love and have them share why they connect to that particular poem — not just the structure of the poem, but why they find it meaningful and what connects them to it.”

Over the past two decades, Mook has guided the community poetry reading as it has grown and evolved. The event moved from Pawlet to Poultney in 2014, and since 2016 it has been held at Stone Valley Arts at Fox Hill, a 200-year-old stone edifice that began its life as a Methodist church and later housed a school, a community center and a Masonic temple before being transformed into a hub for the arts.

Mook said the Stone Valley center, which sponsors the annual poetry reading and also hosts a monthly literary open mic, is an ideal space for a reading. The center also offers dance and art classes, exhibitions and writing workshops.

The Favorite Poem reading, scheduled this year for 2 p.m. Sunday, April 21, has one ground rule: Participants can’t bring poems they or their friends or family members have written.
For local poets, Mook has helped to organize a companion event, Poultney Poetry Downtown, in which people submit works for display in the windows of downtown businesses for the month of April.

Mook said as these events gradually have gained traction over the years, he hopes they are dispelling some misconceptions about poetry, one participant at a time.
“Unfortunately, because people’s initial experiences with poetry at school, there’s a conception that poetry is inaccessible, or like a riddle to solve,” he said. “Poetry is similar to visual art in that, you can look at a thousand paintings and won’t like them all, but then you’ll see a couple that move you. I encourage those who have had a bad experience: Give it a try, go to a reading and listen -- you may be surprised.”

From grief to verse
To say Mook is an aficionado of poetry is an understatement. It was poetry, he said, that pulled him through some his darkest days after the sudden death of his youngest daughter, Sarah, in 1995. She was 8.

“It changed the path of my life,” Mook recalled. “Sarah was a poet and had written poetry since kindergarten. After she died I read all of her poetry. … It put me on the path.”

When an empathetic friend presented Mook with a book about a woman who read poetry as a means of processing grief, his bond with the art form was solidified.

“I say without exaggeration: Poetry saved my life,” Mook explained. “It was a lifeline for survival those first couple of years.”

Mook had been a businessman, but his daughter’s death was a foundation-shaking event that led him to sell his automobile dealerships. He went back to school, completing a bachelor’s degree in English literature from Arcadia University, near Philadelphia, where he lived at the time. He went on to pursue graduate work in writing at Vermont College in Montpelier (now the Vermont College of Fine Arts). After earning a master’s degree in writing with an emphasis on poetry, Mook decided to make Vermont his home.

“Sarah’s death was a tragic event that uprooted my life,” he said. “I wish it never happened, but you just do the best you can.”

In 2004, Mook started the Sarah Mook Memorial Poetry Contest, created to pay tribute to Sarah’s gift for poetry by acknowledging student poets in kindergarten through 12th grade.
“We started small, but one year, we got as many as 2,000 entries from around the world,” he said. “Just the other day, I got one from a student in Korea.”

Through a fund established by Mook and his family, the student competition provides cash awards in four different age categories. Optional donations can be made each year for a designated charitable donation in Sarah’s name.

In 2019, the Vermont-based Shire Press published an illustrated book of Sarah Mook’s poetry titled “Bees with Fish Wings.” Each of Sarah’s poems is paired with an image by the illustrator Marna Grove, and the back of the book provides worksheets for kids to create their own poems.
“This book is a gift from Sarah,” Mook said.

Joyful expression
Although poetry initially was an invaluable tool that helped him grieve, Mook said he remembers the day its role shifted for him.

“I decided one day to write a poem, and realized, ‘Oh, poetry can be fun,’” he recalled. “While I came to poetry in deep despair, it helped me through that period, and now it’s a great joy in my life.”

Much of that joy involves exposing others to the art of poetry, including through the local events marking National Poetry Month.

“Poetry and healing go together,” Mook said. “It can be channeled into personal growth, and it can also create community, which is why I started these events.”

Poultney Poetry Downtown begins in April and runs through the first week in May. Described as a poetry walk, the event features original poems from regional poets displayed in the windows of local businesses. The event is sponsored by Stone Valley Arts at Fox Hill and is open to all. (The deadline for submissions for this year’s event was March 25.)

In contrast, the Favorite Poem community reading is intended as a celebration of beloved, often well-worn poems by published authors past and present. Open to any interested participants, the Favorite Poem reading entails participants taking to the microphone to read a favorite poem and then describe the poem’s personal significance.

“Hearing everyone’s personal story and why a particular poem is so meaningful to them is an integral part of the experience,” Mook said. “The idea of a favorite poem is a moving target; it can change over time. … I have a number of them. Right now, William Stafford’s ‘A Ritual to Read to Each Other’ is at the top — it’s both personal and universal.”

David Quesnel of Manchester has been participating in Mook’s poetry events for several years and credits them with helping to launch his own foray into writing books.

“It’s always great to be involved with anything David Mook puts forth,” he said. “And reading favorite poems creates some extraordinary dialogue regarding the poem’s author, subject matter, and analysis of what’s being said.”

Quesnel grew up in Middlebury, where he counted the poet Robert Frost as a neighbor. So far, he’s published three books on living and growing up in Vermont. Quesnel also keeps an ongoing notebook of 100 short stories inspired by adventures in his home state. It’s from this latest effort that the author has written several original poems he submitted for this month’s Downtown Poetry event in Poultney.

“I grew up in a college town and still consider Poultney a collage town,” he said, referring to Green Mountain College, which closed in 2019. “David certainly keeps that intellectual influence going.”

Mook said that with the world being more tumultuous than ever, in-person gatherings for the sake of connecting through poetry are a good antidote to social isolation.

“Pinsky said after 9/11, ‘In times of trouble, we turn to poetry.’ That is the power of poetry,” he explained. “It’s a distillation of emotions and experience — and it’s relatable.
“Someone once said, ‘The shortest distance between two people is a poem.’ Those aren’t my words, but I sure have held onto them. And I have Sarah to thank for it.”

 

Visit the web site of Stone Valley Arts at Fox Hill — www.stonevalleyarts.com — for more information about the Favorite Poem community reading on April 21 and the Downtown Poetry walk in Poultney. Visit www.sarahmookpoetrycontest.com for more details on the annual K-12 student poetry contest.