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News

 

News
 

  • My poem "Eve Writes to Mary Cassatt" has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize
    by The Ekphrastic Review.
     

  • Look Again: Portraits of Daring Women opened at the Springfield Museum of Art on April 24, 2024 and will be on view until February 2025. The exhibit features Julie Lapping Rivera's woodblock prints celebrating the lives of remarkable women in history, paired with poems from different poets. As part of the collaborative project, I have written poems inspired by the life and work of Bessie Coleman, Caroline Dorman, Belle Townsley Smith, Ana Mendieta, and Frances B. Johnston. My poems for Coleman, Dorman, and Smith are part of the current exhibit.
     

  • For the ninth straight year I was a participating poet in the the Center for New Americans 30 Poems in November fundraiser, which raised more than $75,000 this year. The Center welcomes and serves immigrants, refugees, migrants, and asylum-seekers in Western Massachusetts, offering free classes in English, career preparation assistance, and support services.  

Reviews and Interviews

Land Marks - reviewed in MER, August 2023. Read the full review here.

In Land Marks, Sharon Tracey’s third book of poetry, the poet has created a body of work that evokes what Robin Wall Kimmerer describes as the longing to live in a world made of gifts, for “we have grown weary of the sour taste in [our]mouths”––the sour that comes from being obsessed with the economy of commodity.   And though you will find commodity in Land Marks, you will find them in Tracey’s astute taxonomy of flora and fauna: California quail and gray fox after a wildfire; North Atlantic Right Whale about to be autopsied; Saguaros that provide haven to the elf owls./ Tracey is doing the heavy lift of trying to bring us to a fundamental understanding:  being on this earth means being connected to everything in it.  And she manages this task with methodical pleasure and focus when she bids us in “To All the Starlings,” to be “open and aware of all the others.”  And by “all” she means it!: horses, cetaceans and crustaceans, chickens, pigs, wildcats, ants, “the last red wolf.”/ Come one, come all......

                                                      —Jiwon Choi, MER, August 2023

                                     

Chroma: Five Centuries of Women Artists - reviewed in Boston Globe's New England Literary News, Jan 2021
 

Art in verse

"In her new collection of poetry “Chroma” (Shanti), Sharon Tracey responds to 47 works of art by women artists whose work spans five centuries and 25 countries. In these ekphrastic poems, she is an astute and sensitive reader of paintings. She acts as a sort of visual translator, creating atmosphere and image, making us alert to the relationships at play: viewer with viewed, poet with painting, with painter. Her language is fresh and lush. She writes of “paper-flat fields, pearled”; a waterfall is a “lithological myth-maker.” And it’s beautiful to the ear. Listen: “the shapes I love: / ligulate, spikelet, awn. / On the kitchen wall I hang / the sheath and blade.” The collection is broken into four “galleries” which move through time and place, with responses to Agnes Martin and Etel Adnan, and a number of lesser known artists, some of whom are still painting today. And there is wisdom here, too, about the act of not just of looking at a painting, but of looking: “upon entering / a painting: come look, let / something go.” Tracey, who lives in Western Mass, reminds us of the pleasure of pouring oneself into a painting, of what it is to commune with artist, art, and self."

                                                       —Nina MacLaughlin, Globe Correspondent

                                                                                          

Getting to Know Interview

Mass Poetry, February 2021 

A Conversation with Sharon Tracey by Libby Maxey

The Ekphrastic Review, December 2020

Collaboration - Art and Poetry

Look Again, A Collaborative Print and Poetry Project

I am a contributing poet to this ongoing collaborative project conceived by artist and printmaker Julie Lapping Rivera. I have written poems celebrating the lives of Ana Mendieta, Bessie Coleman, Frances B. Johnston, Caroline Dorman, and Belle Townsley Smith.  View some of the prints and paired poems here.

Past Poetry Readings 

 

2024     Poetry Reading, Look Again: Portraits of Daring Women, Springfield Art Museum

2024     Poetry Reading, Sense of Place, Northampton Center for the Arts

2023     30 Poems in November Reading, Smith College Poetry Center

2023     Silkworm 16 Launch and Reading, November, Florence Poets Society

2023     Straw Dog Writers Guild Author Showcase, co-sponsored with the Forbes Library

2022     30 Poems in November Reading, Northampton Center for the Arts

2022     Silkworm 15 December Launch and Reading, Florence Poets Society

2022     Gallery of Readers Press, Four Poets Reading

2021     Silkworm 14 November Reading, Florence Poets Society

2021     April 28 - Authors Reading from New Collections, Florence Poets Society

2021    April 6 - Featured Writer - Straw Dog Writers Night In 

2020    30 Poems in November Virtual Reading, Center for New Americans

2020    Silkworm 13 Virtual Reading, Florence Poets Society

2019    Arts & Poetry Biennial Reading: From Seed to Fruition, Northampton, Forbes Library

2019    30 Poems in November Reading/Center for New Americans, Smith College

2019    Silkworm 12 Reading, Lily Library, Northampton

2019    Mom Egg Review Reading, Poets House, New York City 

2018    30 Poems in November Reading, Smith College

2018    Silkworm 11 Reading, Lily Library, Florence

2018    Compass Roads Reading, The Book Mill, Montague

2018    Compass Roads Reading, Senior Center, Northampton

2017    30 Poems in November Reading, Center for New Americans/Smith College

2017    Silkworm 10 Reading, Lily Library, Florence
2017    Featured ReaderStraw Dog Writers Night Out, Northampton

2017    Book Launch, What I Remember Most is Everything, Northampton

2016    Silkworm 9 Reading, Lily Library, Florence

2016    30 Poems in November Reading, Center for New Americans/Smith College

2015    30 Poems in November Reading, Center for New Americans/Smith College

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