Up Coming Events

The ARTery Gallery is pleased to announce a poetry reading featuring Milford’s first Poet Laureate, Chuck O’Neil. Recently, Chuck read at the Soldiers and Sailors Monument in Milford on Memorial Day, and appeared with Chief Daniel StrongWalker Thomas at the Milford Theater for a Grey Towers Heritage Assoc. Lenape homecoming event. The ARTery is honored to present Mr. O’Neil for a full-length reading, the first since his appointment as Poet Laureate earlier this year.

 

A resident of Milford since 1982, O’Neil’s poems are rich with local imagery, yet often in their specificity they speak beyond a particular place to what it means to be human, alive in the world — in the same way that a painting can awaken the interior life of the viewer. 

 

Gallery Director, Marie Liu, states: “The moment I learned that Milford had named a Poet Laureate, I wanted to get in touch with him. Our town is steeped in the arts, and with such a variety of festivals and events like Opera in the Park, Music-Fest, Readers and Writers Festival, Dance-Fest, Black Bear Film Festival, and it seemed to me that poetry should also be featured in our community.”

 

Chuck O'Neil's reading coincides with Marie Liu's featured exhibit, since both painter and poet use their work to express their sense of belonging to a place beyond current experience or time:

 

‘. . . And though I’d never

Passed those buildings before

I remembered them

 

And it seemed to me

I was always

From that place

 

I arrive today 

As I arrived 

Years ago . . .’   

 

            from ‘The Borough’ 

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The free poetry reading will begin on Friday, October 21st, at 7pm. Author-signed books will be available for purchase for $10 each (cash or check only), with all proceeds donated to The Greater Pike Community Foundation.

 

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