"Working the Piscataqua." The Portsmouth Poet Laureate Program chose 12 finalists in its "Voices and Vision" project: a groundbreaking initiative spearheaded by Portsmouth Poet Laureate John Perrault to bring together poets and visual artists to create works of public art which would then be acquired by businesses and municipal organizations and permanently displayed in the Portsmouth area.
My photographer-husband, Charter Weeks, and I were among the artists chosen; their collaboration is titled "Working the Piscataqua."
Our piece combines images of the vessels working
the city's port with poems about the river and ocean's working birds.
The full-sized original--designed as a kind of oversized book--can be
seen at Ocean National Bank, Islington Street Branch, Portsmouth, NH.
For information about the "Voices & Vision" project, including the locations of the other collaborative pieces, go to www.pplp.org
NEW! Barrington Community
Playground
A community-wide effort includes a
fence panel collaboration between Barrington Artist Diane St.
Jean and me. The project can be viewed at
www.barringtoncommunityplayground.com
BUILDING A BOAT IN A WEEKEND!
May 17-20, 2007
Over a single weekend in May, Charter and I, our
grandchildren Raven and Summer Matthews from Seattle, and the inestimable
UNH Docent, Nate Hazen, built
a Bevins Skiff. Six families began with an orientation (pizza supplied!) by
Ray Belles of the UNH Marine Docent Program. That night we saw a
finished Bevins skiff and we saw our skiffs: six neat piles of mahogany
sticks and mahogany plywood. Starting at 8:30 on Friday morning, we
began nailing and screwing and gluing and sanding. We worked straight
for 9 hours (with a short lunch break) and started in again on Saturday.
Another nine hours. We put on the finishing touches Sunday morning
and, with five other family-builders, launched our skiff off Jackson's
Landing in Durham at 2 pm Sunday.
We agreed that it was the most amazing experience any of us had ever
had. And it was fun!
For snapshots of our fantastic accomplishment, click here.
Building a Bevins
Skiff
For information about the Family
Boatbuilding Program, click here.
UNH Family Boatbuilding
Weekend
LISTEN!
Garrison
Keillor reads my poem on The Writers Almanac!
"Standard
Plumbing" (from Weasel in the Turkey Pen)
CLICK HERE TO READ BARRINGTON LIBRARY POETRY DAY POEMS!
MARIE'S RANDOM ARTLINKS
CHARTER'S AWESOME PHOTOS! www.congajoy.com (son Bill Matthews' hand drumming site) www.inmyfathersfootsteps.com (son Sebastian Matthews literary site) www.poems.com (a contemporary poem a day) www.poets.org (Academy of American Poets site...great resource!) www.twc.org (Teacher & Writers Collaborative... great resource!) www.pplp.org (Portsmouth Poet Laureate Program) cont. | 
