CAMPFIRE presents | Poets Kelan Nee + Matt Daly + Spencer Reece
Tuesday, September 10, 2024, 4:55 PM
CAMPFIRE presents | 1st Book, 2nd Book, 3rd Book Poets Kelan Nee + Matt Daly + Spencer Reece | Sunday, October 20, 6:00 p.m. - 7:30 p.m., Outdoor Fire Pit at the Virginian Courtyard (weather permitting). RSVP and share on Facebook here!
This month, CAMPFIRE welcomes three esteemed poets — each who has just published a new collection — for a conversation around poetry, creativity, and how art can embody realities of truth and beauty in ways that evade more straight-forward, logic-driven ways of thinking, arguing and explaining.
Poetry forces us to slow down, and to pay deeper attention to the world around us, and cultivate more imaginative ways of seeing one another. In this age of ramped up news cycles, sensory influx, and entrenched polarization, poetry invites us to consider alternate ways of seeing and experiencing — and ultimately shows us how the imagination in not just a mode of creativity, but also a capacity of hope and empathy.
We will host this month’s event literally around a CAMPFIRE in the Virginian Courtyard (weather permitting), and stoke some life-giving conversation over s’mores, beneath a canopy of stars (and in the Saloon, if it’s too chilly!).
Kelan Nee is a poet and carpenter from Massachusetts. His work has been published by Poetry Magazine, Academy of American Poets, The Yale Review, The Missouri Review, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA from Washington University in St. Louis, and is pursuing a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Houston. He is the editor of Gulf Coast Journal. His awards and fellowships include a 2023 Gregory Djankian Scholarship awarded by The Adroit Journal, a 2022 Inprint C. Glenn Cambor fellowship, a 2022 Bread Loaf Contributor’s award, and Academy of American Poets prizes in 2021 and 2024.
Matt Daly is the author of Between Here and Home (Unsolicited Press), the chapbook Red State (Seven Kitchens Press), and the recently-published The Invisible World (Unsolicited Press). Matt is the recipient of a Neltje Blanchan Award for writing inspired by the natural world and a Creative Writing Fellowship in Poetry from the Wyoming Arts Council. His poems have appeared in publications including Pilgrimage, The Cortland Review, and High Desert Journal as well as the Sixteen Rivers Press anthology America, We Call Your Name. He is also the director of Jackson Hole Writers.
Spencer Reece is the author of three collections of poetry — including Acts, which was published in 2024 by Farrer, Straus, and Gireaux — as well as an acclaimed memoir and book of watercolor meditations. His 2003 collection The Clerk's Tale was selected by Nobel Laureate Louise Glück as winner of the Bakeless Prize, and was recognized with an award from the Library of Congress. His 2014 collection The Road to Emmaus was long-listed for the National Book Award, and short-listed for the prestigious Griffin Prize. In 2017, Reece edited a bilingual anthology of poems by the abandoned girls of Our Little Roses, Counting Time Like People Count Stars.
CAMPFIRE reimagines how we gather as community. Each month, we bring in guest speakers for a unique, participatory storytelling experience, hosted in a subtly ritualized framework, to explore what most drives, moves and inspires us.
Free and open to the public.
***Billy's Burgers and fare from the Virginian Saloon available onsite / free to first-time attendees!***
CAMPFIRE Gatherings are interactive, dynamic storytelling experiences that thrive on guest participation. Guests are encouraged to arrive early and stay late as we enjoy a festal 'communion' of food, libations, and conversation together. Above all, CAMPFIRE aims to create a space for anyone craving meaningful connection.
CAMPFIRE also supports regular small-group meet-ups for individuals keen on deepening conversation and connection over meals, film and article discussion, and skiing / hiking forays into the backcountry.
A project of St. John's Episcopal Church, CAMPFIRE is an inclusive, celebratory community that affirms and honors the dignity and beauty of every human being. All are welcome, always.
Learn more at https://www.stjohnsjackson.org/campfire/
