People and Their Poems - Season 3

For 22 years, Margaret Hunt was a high school English teacher. Currently, she is a student teacher evaluator for the Alternate Route to Certification. She also teaches a GED prep course to adult learners. Margaret holds a BA from Smith College and an MAT from Columbia Teachers College. A lifelong amateur and professional canoe racer and wilderness canoe paddler, Margaret is a contributing writer for the My Musings blog on the ⁠Friends of Topsmead State Park website⁠. Margaret started a poetry club when she taught at Torrington High School, and she created and taught courses in creative writing and poetry at Pomperaug High School.  

EPISODE EXTRAS

• ⁠Dana Gioia - Can Poetry Matter?⁠

• Introduction to Poetry⁠ - Billy Collins

• ⁠How to Eat a Poem⁠ - Eve Merriam

Sandy Carlson⁠, poet laureate of Woodbury, Conn., talks nature poetry with Tom Nicotera and Sherri Bedingfield.

⁠Sheryll (Sherri) Bedingfield⁠ worked for thirty years as a counselor, family therapist, and psychotherapist. She started with the YWCA as a counselor and continued with her education. She worked for several years with East Hartford and later with Glastonbury Youth and Family Resource center. She also had a small private practice after working with the two towns. Sherri has two poetry collections, Transitions & Transformations (Antrim House, 2010) and The Clattering, Voices from Old Forfarshire, Scotland (Grayson).⁠ Read more about Sherri here⁠. 

Tom Nicotera has taught poetry classes and workshops in Washington, D.C., and in Maryland. In Connecticut, Tom ran a poetry series at Susan's Cafe in Granby, and for 25 years was involved as cofounder/coordinator of the Bloomfield Library's Wintonbury Poetry Series. He was editor of Charter Oak Poets II, an anthology of Hartford area poets, and was on the organizing committee for the 2001 Connecticut Poetry Festival at Middlesex Community College. For several years, he was a mentor for the student poetry collaboration between the American School for the Deaf and the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts. He has a book of poems titled What Better Place To Be Than Here?, and he has published poems in various journals, magazines, and anthologies. “Nathan Hall State Forest” previously appeared in Woodlands, the magazine of the Connecticut Forest and Parks Association.