Arts & Entertainment

"Sweetheart Night" Poetry Reading in Fanwood on Feb. 19

The Carriage House Poetry Series is holding a free Valentine's Day themed poetry reading on Feb. 19 at 8 p.m.


The following information was provided by the Carriage House.

The Carriage House Poetry Series invites the public to attend a free event on Tuesday, February19th at 8:00 p.m. in the Kuran Arts Center on Watson Road, off North Martine Avenue, adjacent to Fanwood Borough Hall. (GPS use 75 N. Martine Avenue). The 2013 season of the Carriage House Poetry Series opens with the annual “Sweetheart Night,” a combined music and words event in observance of Valentine’s Day.

The featured poets will be Charles Johnson and Laine Sutton, husband and wife poets from Hillsborough, NJ, who will read their poems following a mini-concert of love songs and instrumentals performed by Fanwood musician Brian Celardo. Charles H. Johnson won the County College of Morris 2011 New Jersey Poets Prize for his poem “Leaving” and the 2010 Paterson Poetry Prize for Literary Excellence for his third book, “Smoke Signals.”

A Rutgers graduate, he is poetry instructor for the Middlesex and Monmouth counties Arts High Schools, the Middlesex County Youth Shelter, and a visiting poet for the Paterson School System. Charles won the 1998 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award, and has been poetry editor for the online literary e-zine Identity Theory and poetry reviewer for the Home News Tribune in East Brunswick. 

Laine Sutton Johnson is a retired high school drama director and English teacher. She received her BA from Wagner College and her MA in speech and theater from Montclair State University.  In 1998, Laine was awarded the Governor’s Award for Outstanding Speech and Theater Teacher of the Year. She is a long-time member of Actor’s Equity and has performed in numerous shows, including Hello Dolly (in the role of Dolly), Belle of Amherst (as Emily), and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolfe (as Martha). Her one-act play “In Another Place” has been selected for Villagers Theatre Playwrights’ Series to be performed this spring. 

With this special event, the Carriage House Poetry Series begins its fifteenth year at the Kuran Arts Center, an historic Gothic Revival structure that was once a 19th century carriage house, hence the name of the series.

The Feb. 19 reading is free and open to the public. An open mic will follow the featured performances. For more information call 908-889-7223 or 908-889-5298. For online directions, information, and to see the 2013 Poetry Series calendar, visit http://carriagehousepoetryseries.blogspot.com/.


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