Booklover’s Gourmet Reading

Join us on Saturday November 5th for an afternoon of poetry.

Curt Curtin and his wife, Dee O’Connor, will read from the collection at Booklover’s Gourmet, located at 72 East Main Street in Webster, MA on Saturday, November 5, 2022. A brief open mic will start at 2 p.m. followed by the featured reading. Copies of the book will be available for purchase. A bilingual selection of the poems (Spanish and English) is currently in development for distribution within schools and other settings. Teen and pre-teen readers are highly encouraged to attend.

For more information or to reserve a seat, call 508-949-6232 or email deb@bookloversgourmet.com.

With four poetry collections released in four years, Curt Curtin is finally getting his work out into the world, making his later years a time of creative transference. His latest collection, So Much Depends On Where You Live, is both playful and deeply serious. Targeted to young readers in their teens and tweens, the collection includes the “wit, inventive rhyme schemes, and fun wordplay” that characterized his previous collection for younger children, but this new work includes challenging subject matter more appropriate for older children. The opening section entices the reader with images of home, presenting warm memories in a diversity of settings ranging from a nine-story apartment to a mud hut in the Sahel. The second section moves the reader inward through metaphors of closets and themes of loss, bullying, domestic violence and foster care. The final section zooms out to take in the universe, lightening the mood again with images from earth and beyond.

“Curt Curtin crafts poems that weave sound, rhythm and meaning into a familiar, yet unrecognized world where children are both seen and heard.” –Susan Roney-O’Brien, poet/educator.”

Curtin has won several awards for poetry including the Worcester County Poetry Association’s Frank O’Hara Award (2010) and the Connecticut Poetry Society’s annual contest (2019). He has twice been named a Pushcart Prize nominee. His poetry has been published in a variety of journals and anthologies, three chapbooks and three other full-length poetry collections.