BRATTLEBORO-Poets Wyn Cooper and Martha Collins will read from their latest books and discuss their work during an evening of poetry and conversation at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center (BMAC) Thursday, July 30, at 7:30 p.m.
“Poetry started as an oral art, and to me it still is,” said Cooper in a news release. “Hearing poems read aloud, especially by the poet, is a way into the poems that reading them on the page can’t quite match. I’m thrilled to be reading with Martha Collins for the first time, a superb poet — and excellent reader — whose work has meant a lot to me, as well as to the large number of her admirers.”
Cooper is the author of six books of poetry, including his most recent collection, The Unraveling. His poems, stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in publications including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and Poetry, as well as numerous anthologies.
His work has also found an audience through music, with poems adapted into songs by artists including Sheryl Crow, David Broza, and Madison Smartt Bell. His first novel, Way Out West, was published in 2022.
Collins is the author of 11 books of poetry, including Casualty Reports and the award-winning Because What Else Could I Do, recipient of the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America. In 2025, she received the Golden Rose Award from the New England Poetry Club.
A translator, editor, and educator, Collins founded the creative writing program at the University of Massachusetts at Boston and later served as Pauline Delaney Professor of Creative Writing at Oberlin College. Her essay collection Word Work: Essays, Reviews, Reflections was published in 2025, and Like Her Body the World: Early Selected Poems is forthcoming in 2027.
Copies of books by both authors will be available for purchase at the event and are available anytime in the museum’s gift shop.
Admission is free. Registration is recommended; walk-ins are welcome, space permitting. To register, visit brattleboromuseum.org or call 802-257-0124, ext. 101.
This Arts item was submitted to The Commons.