MIDDLEBURY — Award-winning poet and counselor Gary Margolis will be reading from his newly published book of poetry, “Time Inside,” on Friday, May 24, at 4:30 p.m. at the Vermont Book Shop. He will be joined by fellow Green Writers Press author, Tal Birdsey.
“Time Inside,” Margolis’ seventh book of poems, takes us behind the walls, through the metal gates of his experience leading a poetry workshop for inmates in a maximum security correctional facility, and back out to the surrounding worlds of love’s nature and memory’s hold and release of us. Emblematic of Margolis’ writing, sometimes in phrases, sometimes in sentences, Margolis always has an ear for a line’s turning. Each poem finds its centering image that arrests the heart. With clarity, humor, and a counselor’s and poet’s eye, Margolis sees the keys and latches of dark and light inside our time.
Fellow Green Writers Press author and head teacher of the North Branch School, Tal Birdsey has an upcoming book of essays about a year in his independent school, “Hearts of the Mountain: Adolescents, a Teacher, and a Living School,” to be published in October. Birdsey will read selections from that forthcoming book. Co-founder and director of North Branch, Birdsey teaches writing, literature, social studies, art, student government, and ethics and serves as the school counselor, soccer coach, and newsletter and literary magazine editor. In 2008, he published a book about the founding and first year of North Branch School, entitled “A Room for Learning.”
Margolis is also Emeritus Executive Director of College Mental Health Services and Associate Professor of English and American Literatures at Middlebury College. He was a Robert Frost and Arthur Vining Davis Fellow and has taught at the University of Tennessee, and Vermont, Bread Loaf, and Green Mountain Writers’ Conferences. He was awarded the first Sam Dietzel Award for Mental Health Practice in Vermont by the Clinical Psychology Department of Saint Michael’s College. His recent books include “Seeing the Songs: A Poet’s Journey to the Shamans in Ecuador,” a memoir, and “Runner Without a Number,” a book of poems.
The event is free and open to the public. A book signing will follow.