Join the Guilford Poets Guild on October 10th from 6:30pm – 8pm. We’ll begin with an Open Mic at 6:30 and then segue into listening to Pat and Gemma’s poetry.
Patricia Horn O’Brien is a graduate of Columbia School of Social Work and has worked and volunteered as a social worker throughout her adult life. She’s a long time member of the Guilford Poets Guild and in 2012 co-founded a local poetry group, CT River Poets, which now boasts 15 accomplished and productive poets. She’s helped in the establishment of Prison Hospice in three CT prisons and facilitated poetry workshops at York C.I. Pat initiated the ongoing program, Paintings and Poetry, at Florence Griswold Museum.
​​Pat’s been published in several periodicals, including CT River Review, CT Review, Embers, Pulp Smith, Poet Lore, Caduceus, Red Fox Review, Freshwater and Connecticut Review and is the winner of several awards, including from Embers, Connecticut River Review, The Almeda Boulton Memorial Contest and the Acton Library in Old Saybrook CT where she resides with her husband, John … not too far from their three sons where they reside with their excellent partners.  Pat’s first collection of poetry, When Less Than Perfect is Enough was published by Antrim Books and is now in its second printing. Pat has also published The Laughing Rabbit, a memoir which recounts the birth of her son, Richard, whom she surrendered to adoption – the book follows her search for Richard and their reunion 20 years later. Additionally, Pat has published a poetry collection called The Scatter and the Gap.
Gemma Mathewson was born under a new moon, so it took her a while to cast a shadow. From her middle-kid childhood in Clinton CT, she learned a love of language on her Dad’s lap, hearing the likes of Alice in Wonderland, Collodi’s Pinocchio and A Christmas Carol, and her Mom randomly reciting, Mending Wall, The Song of Hiawatha, or the ominous Lady of Shallot, mood depending. Teenage forays into New Haven brought the Exit Coffee House, and a discovery of the global music and power of poetry out loud. After college, and starting a family with Doug in Indian Neck, then Guilford, and eighteen wild and wonderful years as an ECE director/head teacher, she decided to connect with poetry more deeply again. Her work has appeared in Rattle, Remarkings (Chandigarh India), Caduceus, and the GPG’s First Collected Volume, among others in Ireland, the UK and USA. She also returned to New Haven to participate in open mics, and eventually co-host Pi, with Guilford Poet Laureate Mark McGuire Schwartz, at the Institute Library and co-edit its online publication, Circumference. Gemma has also had the pleasure of co-hosting, with Frank Crowley, for the past six years, two poetry series at the Valley Shore Community TV – The Poetry of Immigrants and The (ongoing) Art of Poetry. Her first collected book of poetry, published in 2019, The Museum of Rain, contains selected works from her poetry archive.  At WordPress.com, you will find every poem from 2005, Also called The Museum of Rain,  each poem with her accompanying photographs, in reverse chronological order.
This program is free and open to all.
Please register.