Event
Riverwood Poetry Series
The series takes place in person on the second Wednesday of the month from September 2025 through May 2026. Each night begins with an open mic featuring readers with one poem (one page) and continues with a poetry reading featuring regionally or nationally known poets.
Riverwood Poetry Series @ Real Art Ways will host Jeffrey Harrison and Charles Douthat on Wednesday, December 10, 2025, at 7 pm at Real Art Ways, 56 Arbor Street, Hartford, Connecticut. There will be an open mic this month for the first ten poets who sign up. The authors’ books will be available for purchase during the book signing & conversation, and beer, wine, soft drinks, and snacks will also be available for purchase at concessions. Free admission. Bring a friend! Ample parking is available at Real Art Ways.
Jeffrey Harrison is the author of six full-length books of poetry – The Singing Underneath (1988), selected by James Merrill for the National Poetry Series, Signs of Arrival (1996), Feeding the Fire (2001), winner of the Sheila Motton Prize from the New England Poetry Club, Incomplete Knowledge (2006), runner-up for the Poets’ Prize, Into Daylight, published in 2014 by Tupelo Press as the winner of the Dorset Prize, and Between Lakes, forthcoming from Four Way Books in September 2020. A selection of early poems, The Names of Things, was published in 2006 by The Waywiser Press in the U.K. A recipient of Guggenheim and NEA Fellowships, as well as other honors, his poems have appeared widely in
magazines and journals, in Best American Poetry, The Pushcart Prize Anthology, Poets of the New Century, The Twentieth Century in Poetry, and other anthologies, and have been featured on The Writer’s Almanac, American Life in Poetry, Poetry Daily, and other online and media venues. He has taught at a number of colleges and universities, as well as at Phillips Academy, where he was Writer-in-Residence, and has visited many high schools to read from his work and discuss poetry with students. He lives in Massachusetts.
Charles Douthat is a poet, retired litigator, and visual artist. A second-generation Californian, he graduated from Stanford University, UC College of the Law in San Francisco, and received an MFA in Fine Arts from Warren Wilson College. Since 1982, he’s lived in Connecticut, where he practiced trial law and was honored multiple years with membership in Best Lawyers in America. He began writing poems and painting during a long midlife illness. Since then, his poems have been published in many magazines and journals, including Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac, and his paintings have been widely exhibited. Charles’ first book, Blue for Oceans, was awarded the 2011 PEN New England Award as the best book of poetry published that year by a New England author. J.D. McClatchy called it “a wise and haunted book.” In 2025, Unbound Editions Press published his second book of poetry, titled Again. Alan Shapiro called it “a book impossible not to love.” Charles’s son Ross is an author and columnist for the New York Times. His daughter Jeanne is a film producer at Made Up Stories, a production company in Los Angeles. He lives in Weston, Connecticut, with his wife, the artist Julie Leff.
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.”
