Two beloved Vermont poets and long-time friends, Sydney Lea and Cleopatra Mathis, will each give a short poetry reading and discussion. A short Q&A session will follow. This event is free and open to the public, but donations are greatly appreciated and they support Sundog Poetry Center's continued mission to encourage poetry for all Vermonters. Please register online here. A private Zoom link will be provide on the day of.

Sydney Lea, former Pulitzer finalist, winner of the 1998 Poets’ Prize, Vermont Poet Laureate (2011-15), and founder of New England Review is author of 21 books. His latest is a mock-epic graphic poem, The Exquisite Triumph of Wormboy, produced in collaboration with former Vermont Cartoonist Laureate James Kochalka. His thirteenth collection of poems, Here, appeared in late 2019. Lea is also author of the novel A Place in Mind, four collections of personal essays, and a critical volume, A Hundred Himalayas.

Cleopatra Mathis was born and raised in Ruston, Louisiana, and has lived in New England since 1980. She is the author of eight books of poems; the most recent is After the Body: Poems New and Selected, published by Sarabande Books in 2020.  Her many awards and prizes include a Guggenheim Fellowship, two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and two Pushcart Prizes. Her poems have appeared widely in journals, magazines, and anthologies, including The New Yorker, Threepenny Review, The Georgia Review, The Southern Review, Ploughshares, Best American Poetry, and The Extraordinary Tide: Poetry by American Women. The founder of the creative writing program at Dartmouth College, where she taught from 1982-2016, she lives with her family in East Thetford, Vermont.