Bridgewater poet Faye George read from her latest collection, World of Hard Use (WordTech, 2015), at the Holmes Public Library last week, to celebrate National Poetry Month. George explained that when she looked back through poems she had written she discovered that many of them shared the theme of work, which then became the theme of World of Hard Use. One poem George shared with the audience of seventeen poetry lovers who braved the evening’s cold rain was about the tragic Pemberton Mill collapse in Lawrence in 1860. Another, Pont du Gard, described the construction of the enormous stone aqueduct built by Roman slaves in the first century, A.D., preserved in southern France to this day. George also shared lighter poems, including one about getting ready for work in the morning called The Bathtub, the John, and the Sink. “Don’t laugh,” she joked. “The Paris Review took this one.”
The Friends of the Holmes Public Library sponsored this poetry reading on April 8. If you missed it, George will be reading again at the Lakeville Public Library on Thursday, April 23, at 6:30 p.m. and at the Thayer Public Library in Braintree on Wednesday, April 29, at 7 p.m.