Join the Guilford Poets Guild on Thursday, November 13 at 6:30 PM at the for an evening of poetry, community, and inspiration. The night begins with an Open Mic at 6:30 PM — all are welcome to share! At 7:00 PM, there will be featured readings by Guild poets Sharon Austin Bloom and John Muro. More about our featured poets is below.
Come celebrate local poetic voices and your own – this program is free and open to all.
Sharon Austin Bloom went from predicting corn crop production in Illinois to inspecting chicken farms in Alabama to hedging commodity futures on the Chicago Board of Trade. From there she launched a career as a marketing executive in the food industry, while raising her two boys. A move to Connecticut brought a life changing shift to teaching yoga and keeping bees. And after years of writing ad copy, sales presentations and marketing plans, she finally pursued her dream to become a writer, earning an MFA in Creative Writing. She is honored to be co-president of the Guilford Poets Guild and on the Board of Dudley Farm Museum. She lives in Guilford, Connecticut, with her partner, Jarek, and her dog, Mayday.
Sharon will be reading from her poetry collection and her new book – Holding the Light – which navigates the arc of human experience with grace and humility. This spiritual journey through the fragile nature of love is told in three sections: Finding, Holding and Losing. Bloom finds joy in the fleeting nature of a single raindrop or a bluebird’s message of hope, knowing it cannot be held and that ultimately we lose all we love. Yet she finds light, wonder and even reverence through the darkest suffering. Both joy and sorrow are viscerally portrayed as the paradox of life, where hope prevails through the unifying power of love and the holiness of nature.
John Muro, a lifelong resident of Connecticut and a passionate chocolate lover, has spent the last decade living along the Guilford shoreline. He is a graduate of Trinity College, Wesleyan University and the University of Connecticut. His professional career has been dedicated to conservation and environmental stewardship, and he has served as a founding member of the Sustainable Guilford Task Force.
John’s first book of poems, In the Lilac Hour, was published in the fall of 2020 and was soon followed by Pastoral Suite in 2022. This past September, he released the critically acclaimed A Bountiful Silence & Other Poems. Over the past few years, John has received four nominations for the Pushcart Prize, two nominations for the Best of the Net and he has also received several commendations for his work, including a 2023 Grantchester Award.
The Prairies Book Review has described John’s poems as “quiet, lyrical and deeply reverent,” offering “luminous meditations” that often speak with a “language that is lush yet disciplined.” His work has appeared in numerous literary anthologies and journals, including Acumen, the Belfast Review, River Heron, Sky Island, the Valparaiso Review and elsewhere. John and his wife Debbie have four children and eleven grandchildren whom they love to spoil with pieces of chocolate.
Please register.