Artists on Artists

Three Backshore writers:

Poets Schuyler Hoffman and Peter Tuttle, and prose writer Peter Anastas will read from and discuss their work.

Event: The Society for the Encouragement of the Arts (seARTS) of Gloucester continues its Artists on Artists series on September 15, 2005 at 7 pm Poets Schuyler Hoffman and Peter Tuttle, and prose writer Peter Anastas, founders of Backshore Writers’ Collaborative, will read from and discuss their work, the literary process, and the mission of Back Shore Press

When: Thursday, September 15, 2005, 7 pm to 9 pm (member reception, 6:30 pm)

Where: TBA

Admission: Free to members, $5 for non-members. Refreshments will be served.

Who: Peter Anastas was born in Gloucester, Massachusetts in 1937 and attended local schools. He holds degrees in English from Bowdoin College and Tufts University. His previous publications include Glooskap's Children: Encounters with the Penobscot Indians of Maine (Beacon Press), Landscape with Boy, a novella in the Boston University Fiction Series, At the Cut, a memoir of growing up in Gloucester in the 1940s (Dogtown Books), and Broken Trip, a novel (Glad Day Books), along with fiction and non-fiction in Niobe, The Falmouth Review, Stations, America One, The Larcom Review, Polis, Split Shift, Cafe Review and Sulfur. Anastas is also the editor of Maximus to Gloucester: The Letters and Poems of Charles Olson to the Editor of the Gloucester Daily Times, 1962-1969 (Ten Pound Island Books).

Schuyler Hoffman is a poet and a playwright. His poetry issues from the Beat and Black Mountain traditions, as a part of the post-Beat movement. The influences on his dramatic writing range from Strindberg and Beckett to Sam Shepard and Sarah Kane.

He has published two chapbooks of poetry and a poetry-music CD. He has read his poetry in Boston, Hartford and Los Angeles and at numerous open mikes in the Boston area. He has also been involved in producing poetry festivals of the works of Charles Olson, Michael McClure, and Allen Ginsberg in the city of Gloucester, Massachusetts where he makes his home.

As a performing poet, he has developed a poetry-music collaboration with the musician Richard Atwood, the goal being to alter the relationship between language and music in order to explore an imaginal common space between them. The duo has performed this unique blend of poetry and guitar-based rock tinged with jazz and blues in venues across eastern Massachusetts.

Schuyler Hoffman's first original play The Incredible Nickel Thief was developed and performed in Hartford in 1968 by the experimental Stillpoint Theatre Workshop. His full length play Napalm Rain was workshopped with the UMass-Boston playwriting faculty at the Playwriting and Performance Workshop on Nantucket in the summer of 2001. His one act plays Fog and The Net were read at the Last Frontier Theatre Conference in Alaska in 2003 and 2004.

He is currently writing a long play about fascism in a post-capitalist world and working on a selection of poetry for publication with Back Shore.

For information call: Michele Miller 978-283-9923 or www.searts.org

The Society for the Encouragement of the Arts (seARTS) is a recipient of the Massachusetts Cultural Council’s Adams Arts Fund for Cultural Economic Development.