Bookplate to welcome Sue Ellen Thompson May 29

The Bookplate is continuing their 2024 season of author lectures on May 29 with poet Sue Ellen Thompson for a 6 p.m. event at The Kitchen and Pub at The Imperial Hotel.

As the title poem reminds us, “For each of us/ there is a place,/ a period of time,// a lover’s face/ that we must veer away from…”. Sea Nettles is a book of poems about what we are often reluctant to confront: the memories that still trouble us and the losses we would just as soon forget. Former friends, old lovers, and mortality make frequent appearances, along with migrating birds and rising waters. Behind these poems lurks the knowledge that none of us can know what fate has in store for us. As the opening poem warns, “For you, the Universe has something else in mind.”

“I love how this collection gives us decades of insight into a family, offers epiphanies that are only available after many years have gone by. These are personal poems with a wide perspective, intimate poems that take the long view. Each poem is like a stepping stone that bridges the present and the past. It feels appropriate, then, that this collection features poems from two previous collections, providing a richer understanding of the relationships we’ve explored in the first half of the book. These are efficient, muscular poems with sensual, unusual language. This collection provides, as the poet writes, “a sudden intrusion of daylight” in which I found myself drawn in by love, disappointment, and the truth of just how much we need each other to meet ourselves.” wrote Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, author of Hush.

Thompson is the author of six books of poetry and the editor of The Autumn House Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry. Her work has been included in the Best American Poetry series, read on National Public Radio more than a dozen times by Garrison Keillor, and has been nominated twice for the Pulitzer Prize. She teaches workshops at The Writer’s Center in Bethesda, and was the recipient of the 2010 Maryland Author Prize from the Maryland Library Association.

For more event details contact The Bookplate at 410-778-4167 or contact@thebookplate.net. These events are free and open to the public. The Kitchen at The Imperial is located at 208 High street in Chestertown. The Bookplate will continue their event series with a reservation only author lecture at The Lawrence Wetlands Preserve on June 12 as author Christopher Tilghman will be discussing his new book On The Tobacco Coast.