We all know how masterfully painters have captured the beauty of Cape Anne over the centuries. But what about writers? A female writer?
On Friday, a crowd packed into the pews of Gloucester's Unitarian Universalist Church to receive one by one a gorgeous collection of poems and prose written by local women in the Cape Ann language, a love letter to Cape Ann. Ta.
Sea, sky, sun, stars, sand, salt, coves and quarries, granite and gravel – these are words that evoke images that swim through these works, like the colors on a canvas.
The late Rufus Collins, Gloucester's Poet Laureate, described the sea as “we dwell in its spirit” in a poem read by the Reverend Wendy Fitting. “We look at it and see potential in it.”
The caliber and range of talent on display at Friday night's event more than lived up to those potentials.
In unison, in rapid succession, 10 women writers read passages from the works of 10 women dating back to the 1700s, highlighting gender equality from the pen of Gloucester City's pioneering feminist scribe, Judith Sargent Murray. and timely excerpts about inequality.
The battle of the sexes also surfaces in the raucous works read by Ray Francoeur. In the film, a sea of alcohol is destroyed with a hatchet one day in 19th century Lockport, when Hannah Jumper and a small army of like-minded women have had enough to satisfy the townspeople's appetites. It is. Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum.
Friday night's event, a project of the Gloucester Quadcentenary Literary Committee and organized by the Gloucester Writers' Center, was held to commemorate International Women's Day. International Women's Day has been celebrated on March 8 every year since its creation by labor activists at the beginning of the last century. .
Joanne Hart, who hosted the evening as chair of the 400th Literary Committee, was thrilled with how her carefully choreographed readings (just five minutes each) were received by an estimated audience of 150 people. She said she was impressed. male.
The men's presence was a pleasant surprise, she said, as past readings of women writers had been well attended but only women.
“Many couples seemed to be enjoying the evening,” she said.
“Joanne was wise to keep her readings concise,” said Barbara Boudreau. She herself is the author of two novels, and she has read three books of short poetry. “Reading can be difficult. If it lasts too long, you can lose your audience.”
There were no such worries on Friday night.
A love letter to Cape Ann was accompanied by a passage that spoke of what one poet called “our quilted life,” a life of love, loss, and fear for an endangered ecosystem. .
The line that director and writer Kim Smith read was one of Hart himself, observing a dying cable reef and saying, as if speaking for the earth itself, “Like a shadow on the water, The Earth was disappearing.”
The only man who actually attended the event was Henry Fellini, founding executive director of the Gloucester Writers' Center, and that was as a wandering photographer.
It reminded me that in this city where men go down to the sea in boats, women keep the home fires burning.
Or, as Rufus Collinson wisely described the city's iconic sculpture, “The Man at the Wheel, Our Lady of the Good Voyage.”
Joann MacKenzie can be reached at 978-675-2707 or jomackenzie@gloucestertimes.com.
