NEWTON -- The Newton Free Library Poetry Series will debut with new host Doug Holder at 7 p.m. on Tuesday with readings by Jonathan Roses, Joanna Nealon and Andrew Jantz. It is the first of three fall readings.
Holder, a local poetry organizer, is past president of Stone Soup Poetry and founder of IbbetsonStreet Press, which published Marc Widershein's "The Life of All Worlds" about growing up in Jewish Dorchester in the 1940s. It will feature three dates of great spoken word this fall.
Holder assumed leadership from series founder and long-standing host Robert Johnson, a professor of English at Suffolk University, on April 9 at the library's annual poetry festival.
Roses, a resident of Newton Highlands who holds a doctorate in English from UMass-Amherst, grew up in Greenwich Village in the `50s. Nealon, who is blind, is a former Fulbright Scholar with a bachelor's degree in French literature who has published four poetry volumes. Jantz has published two books of poetry with a third pending and has earned the Best Foreign Translation Award from the New England Poetry Club and the Poet of the Month Award from the Christian Science Monitor.
"A couple of years ago," Roses said, "my wife, Lorraine, who is a professor of Latin American Studies at Wellesley College, suggested I sit in on the poetry writing course Doug Holder was giving at Newton North High School. I had just written my first poem in 35 years, `Father, Flotante'. Doug asked if he could publish it. I was surprised and flattered, and ended up taking Doug's next two workshops."
Roses taught English for 10 years at Lasell, Boston University and Babson before becoming a technical writer at Data General.
"After 21-plus years as technical writer and documentation department manager," he said, "I decided post-Sept. 11 to retire early and spend my time reading and writing, mostly poetry. Together, my wife and I published perhaps half a dozen poems each in Ibbetson Street Press, the homeless community publication Small Change and others."
Roses will read from his book "Small World" on Sept. 10. There are echoes of both Judaism and spirituality in several of the poems. In one (`Passing Thoughts'), I reflect on both 9/11 and the Jewish cemetery where my wife's parents are buried, and where we, too, will be.
"In another (`Gooseberry Beach'), I write about last Rosh Hashanah, about sweetness and pain. I find spirituality in other, not particularly Jewish places -- the bells from the church on the block in New York where I grew up (`Walking Up Tenth Street') or the cathedral in Oaxaca, Mexico (`Solstice').
"We see ourselves as sometimes-observant, secular Jews. ... If you are Jewish, there is always that strong connection with the Jewish people and the tradition."
On Oct. 8, Judith Steinbergh will be featured along with Elizabeth McKim and Lainie Senechal. Jon Shea, Joe Torra and Deborah Priestly will read on Nov. 12. The series will pick up again in the spring.
Photograph (Jonathan Roses)
