The Georgetown County Library will present the sixteenth season of the Litchfield Tea and Poetry Series in 2022, featuring poets on January 20, February 17, March 17, and April 21 (third Thursdays). SC Humanities supported this program with a Fast Track Literary Grant.
The Litchfield Tea and Poetry Series is one of the most recognized and long-standing public literary series in South Carolina. Participating poets read from their work, offer writing advice for attendees, and share poetry by other writers that inspires them.
The 2022 series will launch on Thursday, January 20 at 10:00 a.m. featuring poets Ashley M. Jones and Elizabeth Robin. The program takes place at the Waccamaw Library, 41 St. Paul Place, Pawleys Island, SC 29585. The series is free and open to the public.
An emerging voice of the current South, Ashley M. Jones is author of Magic City Gospel (Hub City, 2017), dark // thing (Pleiades, 2019), and REPARATIONS NOW! (Hub City, 2021). Her writing has already garnered several awards, including the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers Award, the Silver Medal in the Independent Publishers Book Award, and the Lucille Clifton Poetry Prize. Her work appears in or is forthcoming at CNN, POETRY, The Oxford American, and Obsidian, among other venues. Jones teaches in the Low Residency M.F.A. program at Converse College in Spartanburg, and she recently served as guest editor for Poetry Magazine.
Elizabeth Robin, retired high school teacher, has three collections through Finishing Line Press: Where Green Meets Blue (2018), Silk Purses and Lemonade (2017), and To My Dreamcatcher (forthcoming 2022). She is the winner of the 2021 Carrie McCray Nickens Poetry Fellowship from the South Carolina Academy of Authors and the South Carolina Writers Association; judge Tiana Clark commented that Robin’s imagery “is fresh and allows for strangeness, devastation, and delight.” A poet of witness and discovery, Robin’s recent work appears in Ripples, The Broadkill Review, and Blue Mountain Review. Robin emcees an open mic poetry program on Hilton Head Island.
On Thursday, February 17, the Litchfield Tea & Poetry Series will shine a light on two rising stars on the poetry scene: Marlanda Dekine and Palmer Smith. On Thursday, March 17, the Series will welcome Edgefield native J. Drew Lanham, a celebrated, widely published author and wildlife biologist. Immediately following Dr. Lanham’s reading, there will be an open mic session. All who attend are invited to read one of their own poems. Participants are asked to please keep their reading to a single poem no longer than a page. On Thursday, April 21, the 2022 Litchfield Tea & Poetry Series will come to an exciting conclusion with two further acclaimed poetic voices across South Carolina: Libby Bernardin and Glenis Redmond.
The mission of the Georgetown County Library is to serve as a community resource that expands and enriches the lives of residents by providing and promoting the use of the library system’s information, education, and recreation resources. Learn more here: https://www.facebook.com/gtlibrary.
The mission of SC Humanities is to enrich the cultural and intellectual lives of all South Carolinians. Established in 1973, this 501(c) 3 organization is governed by a volunteer 21-member Board of Directors comprised of community leaders from throughout the state. It presents and/or supports literary initiatives, lectures, exhibits, festivals, publications, oral history projects, videos and other humanities-based experiences that directly or indirectly reach more than 250,000 citizens annually.
Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash
