Pizza, A Love Story: Screening & Showdown at Real Art Ways

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Pizza, A Love Story: Screening & Showdown

 

Your ticket to this film screening and Q&A includes a blind tasting of three slices of pizza from three beloved pizza institutions in the region. We will collect your vote on your favorite slice and announce the people’s choice immediately after the screening.

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Marinara sauce runs red through the streets of New Haven in this surprising, delectable documentary, which profiles three pizza restaurants – Pepe, Sally’s & Modern – that together stand as the cornerstone of the town’s Italian-American heritage and connoisseurs of the tastiest incarnations of America’s favorite comfort food. This mouth-watering documentary will make you laugh and leave you hungry.

Featuring Lyle Lovett, Henry Winkler, Rick Nielsen, Dave Portnoy

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Director Gorman Bechard and producers of the film will be on stage for a post-screening conversation!

‘Jessamine’ Album Release Show

On Sunday, October 5, you’re invited to join us to celebrate the release of Tony Davis’ new album, Jessamine.

Jessamine is guitarist and composer Tony Davis’ symbolic return to the street where he grew up—a musical homecoming.

The album’s songs are like keepsakes gathered along life’s journey, each one carrying echoes of memories, influences, people, and places that shaped his artistry. Viewed through the lens of all he has lived and learned since those early days, these keepsakes form a body of work that is both deeply personal and expansive. Growing up in a house filled with music, with acclaimed jazz musicians as parents and brilliant artists constantly passing through, Davis absorbed a foundation of creativity and emotional depth that he now honors with this record.

With their distinctive storytelling quality, Davis’s compositions bring a compelling voice to contemporary jazz, blending deep roots in jazz and blues with elements of Latin traditions, folk, rock, and classical music. The sense of home extends beyond place: longtime friends and collaborators, Hartford natives Jonathan Barber (drums) and Matt Dwonszyk (bass), who Davis came up learning alongside in his formative years, join him here along with Chris McCarthy (piano), Matt Knoegel (saxophone), and Daniel Prim (percussion). Together they bring the story full circle, weaving past and present into a vivid, contemporary expression of identity, influence, and experience.

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Hailing from Hartford, Tony Davis is an internationally acclaimed guitarist, vocalist, composer, and producer based in New York City. He has performed at prestigious venues including The Blue Note, The Village Vanguard, Smalls, Jazz at Lincoln Center, and Birdland, and at major festivals such as the Newport Jazz Festival and the Greater Hartford Jazz Festival. In 2016, he was recognized as a rising star guitarist at the Wes Montgomery Tribute Festival in Indianapolis, performing alongside legends of jazz guitar such as Bobby Broom, Peter Bernstein and Pat Martino. He has shared the stage with artists like Anderson .Paak, Christian McBride, Joe Farnsworth, George Coleman, Abraham Burton, Sullivan Fortner, and Steve Wilson. Davis’s music seamlessly blends Latin traditions, folk, rock, and classical influences with deep roots in jazz and blues, creating a unique and compelling voice in contemporary music. In 2020, he released his debut album Golden Year on Posi-Tone Records, followed by Daring Two Be (a duet with Brazilian vocalist Jamile Ayres) and Cloud Nova (2024) on La Reserve Records, marking his first major foray into the singer-songwriter realm. His forthcoming album Jessamine, set for release in Fall 2025, continues his evolution as a dynamic artist committed to pushing the boundaries of contemporary jazz and beyond.

Diane DiMassa Hothead Paisan Book Launch & Conversation

 

“Diane DiMassa can thrill the female soul … fulfilling an untold number of rush-hour fantasies.” – The New York Times

“Hothead is a one-woman revolution…a far-out, hilarious reminder of how your own rage could drive you insane.” – Out Magazine

“The bible of man-hating ball busters driven over the edge of insanity.” – Sarah Schulman

“[DiMassa’s] cartooning style is electric.” – Howard Cruse

“I first met Hothead in the anthology No Straight Lines, a 40-year survey of queer comics. She stands out even among decades of cartoonists’ takes on the pressures of fitting in with heterosexual America…But DiMassa’s creation has been woefully hard to find in recent years. Thankfully, New York Review Books will publish a Hothead collection this August. The sweltering, lingering days of summer feel like the perfect time for the title character to burst back out onto the sidewalk, bat in tow.” – Emma Sarappo, The Atlantic

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This fall, the New York Review of Books imprint is publishing a collection of Diane DiMassa’s 1990s comic Hothead Paisan: Homicidal Lesbian Terrorist. It’s a book that sits at the intersection of riot grrl culture, the zine explosion, underground comics and queer culture.

Hothead Paisan is an icon of the ’90s lesbian DIY scene, a patron saint of those who wonder if going off the deep end is the only sane response to life in modern America. Hothead begins in a murderous frenzy—taking out a variety of chauvinists and creeps—but soon deepens into a reflection on oppression, self-destruction, and living it up outside the conservative norms of the ’90s. Hothead’s rage is stoked by her inner demon, Personality #2, but sometimes tempered with the help of Roz, her friend who offers Zen wisdom and tough love, and Chicken, her cat and constant companion.

You’re invited to join us Thursday, September 25, for a conversation with Diane, led by Alex Dueben, a freelance writer specializing in comics, poetry, books and art.

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Diane DiMassia is an artist and cartoonist best known for her contributions to feminist alternative comics. She debuted her comic-zine Hothead Paisan: Homicidal Lesbian Terrorist in 1991 and has illustrated several books, including Kathy Acker’s Pussycat Fever, Kate Bornstein’s My Gender Workbook, Anne Fausto-Sterling’s Sexing the Body, and Daphne Gottlieb’s Jokes and the Unconscious. Her artwork has been featured in numerous group and solo shows across North America. She is currently based in Bridgeport.

Creative Cocktail Hour
Join us Thursday, August 21, from 6 to 9 PM for our Creative Cocktail Hour.
Admission is free.
We’ll have music, a food truck, custom cocktails, hands-on art-making activities, and exhibitions on view!
But most importantly, you’ll be there!

 

Solo Exhibitions:

“thick, hazy, cleer, blew” Shona Macdonald

“Megafauna (these desperate earthly forms)” Ezra Moth

“After Progress” Adam Viens

Music

On & On Radio (DJ set)

Esmer (Live Band)

Food:

Soulvadorian

 

 

 

Instantiations – Sept 28
Experience music imagined and created in real-time. This series runs from September 2025 to May 2026. Check out the full schedule here!
Sept 28 Performance:

Stephen Haynes-trumpet, cornet, flugelhorn

Jerome Deupree-drums

Steve Lantner-piano

Josh Roseman-trombone

Joe Morris-bass

Riverwood Poetry Series
The series takes place in person on the second Wednesday of the month from September 2025 through May 2026. Each night typically begins with a poetry reading featuring regionally or nationally known poets, followed by an open mic featuring readers with one poem (one page).

Riverwood Poetry Series @ Real Art Ways will host Ciaran Berry and Luisa Caycedo-Kimura on Wednesday, October 8, 2025, at 7 pm.

There will be an open mic this month for the first ten poets who sign up.

The authors’ books will be available to buy for book signing & conversation, and beer, wine, soft drinks, and snacks will be available for purchase. Bring a friend!

Free of Charge. Ample parking is available at Real Art Ways.

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Ciaran Berry was born in Dublin and grew up in Connemara and Donegal. He is the author of four collections of poetry, States (2025), Liner Notes (2018), The Dead Zoo (2013), and The Sphere of Birds (2008), all published by The Gallery Press.

His work has been featured in AGNI, American Poetry Review, Best American Poetry, Best of Irish Poetry, The Georgia Review, The Gettysburg Review, Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry London, The Missouri Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, The Southern Review, and The Threepenny Review. The accolades his work has received include a Whiting Award, the Jerwood Aldeburgh First Collection Prize, the Michael Murphy Memorial Prize, a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, and two Pushcart Prizes. He lives with his family in West Hartford and co-directs the Creative Writing Program at Trinity College.

Luisa Caycedo-Kimura is a Colombian-born writer, educator, and the author of All Were Limones (The Word Works, 2025), winner of the Hillary Tham Capital Collection competition. Other honors include a Connecticut Office of the Arts Emerging Recognition Award, a John K. Walsh Residency Fellowship at the Anderson Center, an Adrienne Reiner Hochstadt Fellowship at Ragdale, and a Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship in Poetry.

A three-time Pushcart Prize nominee and Best of the Net nominee, her poems appear in Four Way Review, Denver Quarterly, The Cincinnati Review, Shenandoah, Rattle, Mid-American Review, RHINO, and elsewhere.

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About Riverwood Poetry Series

The Riverwood Poetry Series, Inc. is a non-profit arts organization committed to promoting and appreciating poetry in Connecticut. RPS, Inc. is invested in providing entertaining and thought-provoking programming while responding to the needs of our neighbors through community outreach and collaboration.

From their Facebook page: “The Riverwood Poetry Series has innovated many programs since our inception, all free to the public. We provide entertaining and thought-provoking poetry in a relaxed atmosphere.” 

Riverwood Poetry Series
The series takes place in person on the second Wednesday of the month from September 2025 through May 2026. Each night typically begins with a poetry reading featuring regionally or nationally known poets, followed by an open mic featuring readers with one poem (one page).

Season Opener! Riverwood Poetry Series @ Real Art Ways will host Sean Thomas Dougherty on Wednesday, September 10, 2025, at 7 pm.

There will be an open mic this month for the first ten poets who sign up.

The author’s books will be available to buy for book signing & conversation, and beer, wine, soft
drinks, and snacks will be available for purchase.

Bring a friend! Free of Charge. Ample parking is available at Real Art Ways.

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Sean Thomas Dougherty’s twenty books include The Dead are Everywhere Telling Us Things, winner of the 2021 Jacar Press Full Length Book Prize, and Death Prefers the Minor Keys from BOA Editions. His book The Second O of Sorrow (BOA Editions 2018) received both the Paterson Poetry Prize, and the Housatonic Book Award. His many awards include two Pennsylvania Council for the Arts Fellowships, the Established Artist Fellowship for Northwest Pennsylvania, a US State Department Fulbright Lectureship, and the James Hearst Poetry Prize from North American Review.

Dougherty teaches writing part-time for Western Connecticut State University’s Master of Fine Arts Program and works as a Med Tech and caregiver for people recovering from traumatic brain injuries in Erie, Pennsylvania.

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About Riverwood Poetry Series

The Riverwood Poetry Series, Inc. is a non-profit arts organization committed to promoting and appreciating poetry in Connecticut. RPS, Inc. is invested in providing entertaining and thought-provoking programming while responding to the needs of our neighbors through community outreach and collaboration.

From their Facebook page: “The Riverwood Poetry Series has innovated many programs since our inception, all free to the public. We provide entertaining and thought-provoking poetry in a relaxed atmosphere.” 

Megafauna: a selection of biomimetic drag

 

 

With performances by Ezra Moth, Maljo Blu, Mx. Ology, and Amygdala

Presented in conjunction with Ezra Month’s immersive eco-art installation at Real Art Ways, Megafauna: a selection of biomimetic drag takes the sculptural and narrative elements of the exhibition and gathers them into a night of performance art.

Considering drag as an artistic medium in its own right, each of the drag performers will stage a spectacle inspired by biological entities and processes. They will sing songs and tell stories about the sea and the sky, about fungus and bacteria, about algae and fish, about birds and bugs – all layered with a healthy dose of camp and queerness. 

 

PROGRAM

7:00 pm: Introduction by Peter Albano

7:10 pm: Performance begins

7:40 pm: Performance ends

7:40 pm – 8:00 pm: Performers prepare for conversation / Guests can visit the exhibit

8:00 pm – 8:30 pm: A Conversation with Ezra and Performers

 

ABOUT THE PERFORMERS

Ezra Moth 

Ezra Moth is an interdisciplinary artist whose work spans both scientific curiosities and dreamlike utopias. Part mad scientist, part sculptor, and part drag persona, their work is inspired by the diversity, symbiosis, and queerness of nature. 

Maljo Blu

Maljo Blu (they/she) is a creator, drag artist, and performer located in Brooklyn, New York. As a theatrical entertainer she uses movement, costume and projection to tell the story of her culture, past, and her fleeting attention span all wrapped up in one little spooky bow.

Mx. Ology 

Mx. Ology is Brooklyn’s premiere celebrity dentist– clinical bombshell, body horror princess, Dadaist comedian, and cartoon come to life– her strong command of narrative draws audiences into a world of absurd, sleazy fantasy.

Amygdala

Amygdala is an interdimensional apparition that merges the hypocritical, the paradoxical, and the absurd into immersive multimedia drag performances. With the hair of a horse and a mouth of piano keys, she’s lived many lives, phasing into the mortal coil only for mischief and an ice cold Canada Dry.

 

Eye on Video: 2025 Film Showcase

 

Real Art Way’s youth filmmaking program, Eye on Video, concludes with a free public screening on Thursday, July 31, at 7 pm, featuring each high school student’s short films. The showcase films investigate a broad range of contemporary topics that are of personal interest to the young filmmakers.

Eye on Video has received generous support from The Common Sense Fund, Stanley Black & Decker, and the Gawlicki Family Foundation. Eye on Video provides teens with the opportunity to learn artistic skills from a Master Teaching Artist (the filmmakers at Hartford Film Company) and career-skills training to prepare them for today’s creative workplace. Each student also receives a weekly stipend, so they don’t have to choose between a quality arts education and a summer job.

The Real Art Ways film curriculum includes camera operation, scriptwriting, storytelling, composition, critique skills, and digital video production, which includes editing, sound design, and lighting design.

A filmmaker Q&A and reception will follow the screenings. All are welcome.

For more information about our education programs, contact Miller Opie at 860.232.1006 x129 or mopie@realartways.org.

 

Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore (Opening Night Screening & Q&A)

This screening is presented in partnership with the American School for the Deaf, the first permanent school for the deaf in the United States and a nationally renowned leader in providing comprehensive educational programs and services for deaf and hard-of-hearing students.

On Friday, July 18, 7 pm, we will present the film, followed by a Q&A with Jeff Bravin, the Executive Director of ASD.

To attend this special screening event, we encourage you to purchase your tickets in advance.

Creative Cocktail Hour
Join us Thursday, July 17, from 6 to 9 PM for our Creative Cocktail Hour.
Admission is free.
We’ll have music, a food truck, custom cocktails, hands-on art-making activities, and exhibitions on view!
But most importantly, you’ll be there!

 

Solo Exhibitions:

Opening reception for”thick, hazy, cleer, blew” Shona Macdonald

“Megafauna (these desperate earthly forms)” Ezra Moth

“After Progress” Adam Viens

Music

Pressing Plant

Food:

Samba’s

 

 

 

Federico Fellini’s Nights of Cabiria (4K Restoration)

In honor of Art House Convergence’s Art House Theater Day, we are offering RAW audiences a classic Fellini film for a one-time-only screening in our cinema.

Art House Theater Day (AHTD) is an annual program of AHC that brings audiences together to celebrate all that art house theaters – and independent film – contribute to our cultural landscape: ambitious and innovative art that provokes, challenges, entertains, and inspires. 2025 marks the 6th annual Art House Theater Day, which launched in 2016 in more than 150 cinemas across the country.

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Your ticket to the film includes a wine tasting event at 6:30 pm. Sample a selection of thoughtfully curated natural wines, inspired by the film, from the new natural wine shop in Wethersfield, Vino Crudo. Come early to try some new wines before going in to see the movie!

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“A deep, wrenching and eloquent filmgoing experience.” – The New York Times

Nights of Cabiria (Le notti di Cabiria) is a 1957 drama co-written and directed by Federico Fellini. The film features Giulietta Masina as Cabiria, a sex worker living in Rome. The film also stars François Périer and Amedeo Nazzari and is based on a story by Fellini, who expanded it into a screenplay along with his co-writers Ennio Flaiano, Tullio Pinelli , and Pier Paolo Pasolini.

In addition to the best actress award at the Cannes Film Festival for Giulietta Masina, Nights of Cabiria won the 1958 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. This marked the second consecutive year that both Italy and Fellini won the award.

In 2008, the film was included on the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage’s 100 Italian films to be saved, a list of 100 films that “have changed the collective memory of the country between 1942 and 1978.” The film is widely considered to be one of Fellini’s best works, as well as one of the greatest films of the 1950s.

In Italian with English subtitles

100% on Rotten Tomatoes

Creative Cocktail Hour
Join us Thursday, June 19, from 6 to 9 PM for our Creative Cocktail Hour.
Admission is free.
We’ll have music, a food truck, custom cocktails, hands-on art-making activities, and exhibitions on view!
But most importantly, you’ll be there!

 

Solo Exhibitions:

Opening reception for “Megafauna (these desperate earthly forms)” Ezra Moth

“thick, hazy, cleer, blew” Shona Macdonald

“After Progress” Adam Viens

Music

Selector AR (DJ)

Food:

Southern Bell Soul Food

 

 

 

CT Lit Fest 2025

 

CT Lit Fest Logo

Mark your calendar for Saturday, October 18, for the next Connecticut Literary Festival!

The CT Lit Fest is a fall book festival co-presented by Real Art Ways. A literary hub under one roof, at the center of Connecticut. A day for writers, teachers, students, and readers to discover and connect with new voices. Events run throughout the day. Admission is free.

The Fest will take over our space for readings, talks, performances, and an interactive typewriter installation. We will host the book fair to showcase publishers, journals, writing programs, and other arts organizations.

Organizations interested in exhibiting at the book fair can follow these instructions. Space will be limited. Sponsorships are also available.

Full Program: To be announced

Food Trucks: TBA

Featured writers: TBA

Donations

To readers, writers, artists, and literary enthusiasts of Connecticut and beyond: We invite you to support the CT Lit Fest and to grow our state’s literary community. Your generous donation will not only help us to provide the best possible showcase for our state’s writers, thinkers, and presses, but it will also allow us to keep the festival accessible to all with free admission.

Your donation is essential to our success. If you choose to make your tax-deductible donation anonymously, your name and giving amount will be kept private. Thank you.

Donate to the CT Lit Fest

Sponsored By:

CT Humanities Logo.

Riverbend Bookshop Logo

Tour previous years of CT Lit Fest at Real Art Ways here.

 

Connecticut Public Presents An Exclusive Screening of “Caregiving”

“When Hollywood meets humanity, powerful stories emerge. That’s what happens in Caregiving, a new PBS documentary that pushes back the curtain on one of America’s most underrecognized — and essential — roles: family caregivers.” – AARP.com (Read the full story here.)

Join Connecticut Public, at Real Art Ways, for a free screening of national documentary, “Caregiving” from Executive Producer, Bradley Cooper!

This event will feature excerpts of the film which explores the untold story of caregiving, intertwining intimate personal stories and revealing both the state and the stakes of care in America today.

The screening will be followed by a panel discussion moderated by Connecticut Public’s Senior Health reporter, Sujata Srinivasan. Panelists include:

  • Cookie Jones, Family Caregiver
  • Johannah Alabi, Certified Nurse Aide
  • Laura Mauldin, Associate Professor, Department of Social and Critical Inquiry, University of Connecticut

 

There is limited seating. Please register here to attend.

 

Burnt Sugar The Arkestra Chamber (Summer Concert)
BURNT SUGAR THE ARKESTRA CHAMBER’S first New England “Toast & Roast the Coast” tour kicks off at Real Art Ways on Friday, June 6, at 7 pm. The tour supports their latest release, If You Can’t Dazzle Them With Your Brilliance Then Baffle Them With Your Blisluth Pt. Two, and their latest sonic “play pen,” The Burnt Sugar SmokeHouse!  Each Show of “Never Playing Anything the Same Way Once” will be special unto itself.

Funded in part by the New England States Touring program of the New England Foundation for the Arts, made possible with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts Regional Touring Program and the six New England state arts agencies.

This free concert is made possible with generosity from the Evelyn W. Preston Memorial Trust Fund, Bank of America, N.A.,Trustee.

Register here to attend.

“Burnt Sugar’s double live opus If You Can’t Dazzle Them With Your Brilliance Then Baffle Them With Your Blisluth, first released on two CD-Rs in 2005 and now available on Bandcamp, documents key portions of several gigs from spring and summer 2004, including one — from the Vision Festival, the group’s first appearance there — that I was actually present for. Dubbed “Himatsuri (Fire Festival)” on disc, it’s a roughly 45-minute, slowly evolving performance that balances horns, strings, and some unearthly vocalizing, and the lineup was absolutely stacked, including Matana Roberts on alto sax, Mazz Swift on violin, and Shahzad Ismaily on banjo and bass. It was easily the most exciting thing I saw at the VF that year.

Well, now they’ve released a second volume, which features performances recorded in Detroit and Ohio in 2022, plus some studio additions from 2024. Over the years, Burnt Sugar transformed from a genre-less improvising ensemble to a shit-hot funk-rock band with a wild streak. They did shows where they tackled the music of other artists, albeit never becoming a mere “cover band”, and there are versions of Steely Dan’s “Black Cow” and the Ohio Players’ “Pain” (here retitled “Back Pain”, because they’re playing it backwards) that couldn’t be anyone but Burnt Sugar. But it’s the original conduction/composition/improvisations here that prove that even in the absence of founder Greg Tate (bassist Jared Michael Nickerson is leading things now), they still sound like no one else.” – Phil Freeman/Burning Ambulance

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“Electric Miles with soul, Maggot Brain with a PHD, the Hendrix Evans band of dreams, the underwater funk some hear in A.R. Kane.” – Robert Christgau

Burnt Sugar Arkestra Chamber is “a territory band, a neo-tribal thang, a community hang, a society music guild aspiring to the condition of all that is molten, glacial, racial, spacial, oceanic, mythic, antiphonal and telepathic.” – the late Greg Tate

“Listening/watching Burnt Sugar play live is an intense, amazing experience. A band of equals, where every single unique note is part of the game. If there existed a place where Sun Ra’s Arkestra would meet George Clinton’s Funkadelic/Parliament, it’s there that you will find Burnt Sugar the Arkestra Chamber.” – Pino Saulo/Rai Radio

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Playing on June 6th are:

Shelley Nicole – Vocals/Conduction

Miss Olithea – Vocals/Electronics

Bruce Mack – Vocals/Conduction

Lewis “Flip” Barnes – Trumpet

“Moist” Paula Henderson – Bari Sax

Leon Gruenbaum – Keyboards/Samchillian/Talk Box

Ben Tyree – Electric Guitar

Marque Gilmore Tha Inna Most – Trap Drums/Electronics/Conduction

Jared Michael Nickerson – Electric Bubble Bass

 

BSAC will be supporting their latest release – If You Can’t Dazzle Them With Your Brilliance Then Baffle Them With Your Blisluth, Pt. Two – and will include a “Burnt Sugar SmokeHouse” element in these June New England performances. The “SmokeHouse” is where you’ll find BSAC-member-led bands performing short sizzlin’ hot sets.

 

Coo Dank Off The Top of The Dome Conduction

Take a listen to more Burnt Sugar on Bandcamp: https://burntsugarthearkestrachamber.bandcamp.com

Doggerel: An Evening with Reginald Dwayne Betts
Join us on Monday, June 16, 6:00 pm for a reading and conversation with author Reginald Dwayne Betts to celebrate the launch of his new book, Doggerel. 

“Doggerel is an apt name for this lovely collection, with the canine hidden in plain sight in its title and coursing through so many of the poems. Betts manages to capture essences of memory, of hope or loss, of oft-overlooked everydayness—in a way that feels surprising and familiar at once.”—Dr. Alexandra Horowitz, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know

With his transcendent collection of poetry, Felon (Norton, 2019), Reginald Dwayne Betts became our foremost chronicler of the ways prison shapes and transforms American masculinity.

A 2021 MacArthur Fellow, Betts is also celebrated for his work as a lawyer and the founder and director of Freedom Reads, a first-of-its-kind organization that is radically transforming access to literature in prison.

Published on the twentieth anniversary of Betts’s release from prison, DOGGEREL is a majestic new volume of poetry that marks a transformative stage in his life and career. This resplendent tableau ruminates on dogs and the ostensibly trivial joys that transform us—peonies blooming, a “symphony” of wine glasses, father-son bike rides, basketball, seeing and being seen, surrendering to a lover’s touch. Channeling dogs both literally and metaphorically, these poems trace everything from the companionship of Betts’s own Jack Russell Terrier to the ways we are dogged by our deepest desires for connection, love, and repair.

On the volume’s title page, Betts offers two definitions of doggerel (DAW-guh-ruhl):

1. of verse: comic, burlesque, and usually composed in irregular rhythm. Also: (of verse or writing) badly composed or expressed; trivial.

2. nah, just a Black man writing poems about his dog, all the dogs he encounters on the street, how having an extra four feet changed his world, then he falls in love.

Betts’s poems then pull us into a revelatory lyrical world. Deploying the pantoum, ghazal, and canzone, he excavates companionship and what it means to bear witness.

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This event is FREE to the public, but will require advance registration.

Books will be sold onsite by River Bend Bookshop, on the day of the event. Concessions will be open and available if guests want to purchase beverages, popcorn, and snacks.

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Reginald Dwayne Betts is the author of three books of poetry, including the best-selling Felon. He is a poet, lawyer, and the founder and CEO of Freedom Reads.

(Photo courtesy of the publisher, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.)

 

Riverwood Poetry Series
The series takes place in person on the second Wednesday of the month from September 2024 through May 2025. Each night typically begins with a poetry reading featuring regionally or nationally known poets, followed by an open mic featuring readers with one poem (one page).

On Wednesday, May 14, at 7 PM, Riverwood Poetry Series @ Real Art Ways will host eight Poets Laureate from Connecticut cities & towns. This is the last installment of the 2024-2025 season!

There will not be an open mic this month. Authors’ books will be available to buy for book signing and conversation. Food and drinks will be available for purchase. Bring a friend! 

This monthly event is free of charge. Ample parking is available via the 56 Arbor parking lot.

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Robert Cording, Poet Laureate of Woodstock
Patricia Martin, State of Connecticut Beat Poet Laureate
Nzima Hutchings, Poet Laureate of Enfield
Vikki Nordlund, Poet Laureate of Glastonbury
Sharmont ‘Influence’ Little, Poet Laureate of New Haven
Steve Straight, Poet Laureat of South Windsor
Virginia Shreve, Poet Laureate of Canton
Micheal ‘Chief’ Peterson, Poet Laureate of New Britain

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About Riverwood Poetry Series

The Riverwood Poetry Series, Inc. is a non-profit arts organization committed to promoting and appreciating poetry in Connecticut. RPS, Inc. is invested in providing entertaining and thought-provoking programming while responding to the needs of our neighbors through community outreach and collaboration.

From their Facebook page: “The Riverwood Poetry Series has innovated many programs since our inception, all free to the public. We provide entertaining and thought-provoking poetry in a relaxed atmosphere.” 

A Double Life
On May 17, we will host award-winning Director Catherine Masud and UConn Law School visiting assistant professor Gaurav Mukherjee in-person for a post-film conversation that explores the film through the framework of legal activism. The main subject of this documentary, Stephen Bingham, will also attend this discussion virtually. 

A Double Life unveils the gripping true story of Stephen Bingham, a lawyer accused of passing a gun to prisoners’ rights leader George Jackson in 1971. Forced into a life on the run, Bingham spends 13 years underground, eluding capture while fiercely determined to clear his name.

Director’s Statement

This film is as much about Steve/Robert as it is about his times. The turbulent era of civil rights, student rebellion, and state surveillance forms the backdrop of a personal story of a man who remained focused on his values and ideals through multiple disruptions and tragedies. The story is told through the various perspectives of his friends and colleagues in both the US and France, as well as family members, both alive and dead. It is also a generational story, of the tensions that arise when world views collide between parents and their children, mirroring wider societal divides. It is a love story of Steve and Françoise, who had to choose to risk everything. To tell this complex story spanning eras and continents, the narrative weaves back and forth between present and past, through a combination of verité treatments and archival footage, to unveil a drama of racial injustice, state surveillance, family jealousies, and political divides.

This story is powerfully relevant in the present era of social unrest and polarization, when our constitutional rights and the rule of law are under threat from within, even as our nation struggles to come to terms with the truth of our dark past. In this contemporary climate, we have much to learn from the life stories of people like Stephen Bingham and other lawyers of his generation who, in dark times, stepped forward in defense of justice and equality. It is not only a film of his time, but also a film for our times.

Photo of Catherine Masud by Peter Morenus/UConn

Director’s Bio

Catherine Masud is an award-winning filmmaker with over 30 years of experience producing, directing, and editing, working in documentary and fictional genres. She produced and co-wrote the acclaimed feature MATIR MOINA (The Clay Bird), which won the International Critics’ Prize at Cannes and became the first Bangladeshi film to compete in the Oscars. Thematically, many of her movies address social justice issues and the conflict between religious and cultural identity. Her films have screened at major festivals, been theatrically released in many countries, and broadcast on such outlets as Turner Classic Movies, Channel 4 (UK), TV Ontario, and SBS (Australia). An American citizen by birth, Catherine spent much of her adult life in Dhaka, Bangladesh, working with her late husband and filmmaking partner Tareque Masud.  Since relocating back to the US in 2015, she has divided her time between teaching, writing, and filmmaking. She currently teaches documentary and human rights at the University of Connecticut.

 

Gaurav Mukherjee is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Connecticut School of Law, where he writes about how constitutional law shapes and is shaped by democratic politics. He is a frequent commentator on Connecticut politics, and his newer work explores how the arts respond to moments of constitutional and human rights crises. Among others, his writing has appeared or is forthcoming in the California Law Review, BYU Law Review, and the Oxford Handbook of Economic and Social Rights.

 

Riverwood Poetry Series
The series takes place in person on the second Wednesday of the month from September 2024 through May 2025. Each night typically begins with a poetry reading featuring regionally or nationally known poets, followed by an open mic featuring readers with one poem (one page).

On Wednesday, April 9, at 7 PM, Riverwood Poetry Series @ Real Art Ways will host Pat Mottola and James Finnegan.

Authors’ books will be available to buy for book signing and conversation. Food and drinks will be available for purchase. Bring a friend! 

This monthly event is free of charge. Ample parking is available via the 56 Arbor parking lot.

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Pat Mottola teaches Creative Writing at Southern Connecticut State University, where she earned an M.S. in Art Education and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing. An award-winning poet and Pushcart Prize nominee, her work is published nationwide in War, Literature & the Arts, Connecticut Review, Main Street Rag, San Pedro River Review, VietNow Magazine, and Paterson Literary Review. Pat is the President of the Connecticut Poetry Society. She served as editor of Connecticut River Review from 2012–2017. On a global scale, she mentors Afghan women writers living in Afghanistan and beyond. She is the author of three collections of poetry: Under the Red Dress, After Hours, and A Town Like That. Pat was the recipient of the prestigious CSCU system-wide Board of Regents Outstanding Teacher Award in 2019, as well as the J. Philip Smith Outstanding Teacher Award in 2021. Pat is the Poet Laureate of Cheshire, CT.

James Finnegan has published poems in Ploughshares, Poetry Northwest, The Southern Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, as well as in the anthologies Good Poems: American Places edited by Garrison Keillor; Laureates of Connecticut; Shadows of Unfinished Things; Imagining Vesalius; Waking Up to the Earth; and Of Hartford in Many Lights. For a decade, he served as president of the Friends & Enemies of Wallace Stevens (stevenspoetry.org). He posts aphoristic ars poetica on the blog ursprache: https://ursprache.blogspot.com/.

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About Riverwood Poetry Series

The Riverwood Poetry Series, Inc. is a non-profit arts organization committed to promoting and appreciating poetry in Connecticut. RPS, Inc. is invested in providing entertaining and thought-provoking programming while responding to the needs of our neighbors through community outreach and collaboration.

From their Facebook page: “The Riverwood Poetry Series has innovated many programs since our inception, all free to the public. We provide entertaining and thought-provoking poetry in a relaxed atmosphere.”