Chapters Bookstore Poetry Reading
Pittsfield - Chapters Bookstore, 78 North St, welcomes poet Elizabeth Elliott to the event room on September 23, at 6PMFor six years Elliott taught the craft of poetry in the Gallatin Division of NYU, NYC, concentrating on a system of scansion employing fourteen ideograms. With these in place the rhythms of the English language become visual; when applied to poetry a reader can compare the rhythms of writers as diverse as Wordsworth, Plath, Heaney or Ashbery.
In 1981 Elliott left NYU to found and eventually to direct, an inter-disciplinary and cross-cultural performing arts group. Spectra performed in various venues in upstate New York and in Manhattan. Among eleven or so years of productions, including "concerts" at Merkin Hall and a joint effort with Manhattan's Asia Society.
In 1987 the music-theater piece,¡Cordoba! was staged in Hudson, New York.!Cordoba! recreates the Moorish culture in Spain circa 1000 AD with period music, poetry and dance and evoking the lives of historical men and women, Moslem, Jewish and Christian. Funds were raised for a Broadway production and preliminary meetings had been held with a well known director when overnight this endeavor was brought to a halt. Saddam Hussein had invaded Kuwait, our source of funding.
Elliott's second book of poetry, "Burn All Night", was published in 1998. She has given many readings, hopes to give many more and looks forward to meeting new friends.
"I like the boldness, the wildness of these poems. It is so clear the writing comes from the heart, allowing nothing to get in the way of the primitive energy, the impulse. Oh there is plenty of craft too, technique enough, but the poems have a kind of spontaneity and momentum."
