Please join the MWPA and SPACE as we co-present a free film screening of Ruth Stone’s Vast Library of the Female Mind followed by a Q&A with filmmaker Nora Jacobson and former Vermont Poet Laureate Chard deNiord.
Ruth Stone was a promising young poet, living an idyllic life with her beloved husband Walter Stone, a poet and professor when he died unexpectedly by suicide in 1959. Already a published poet with one book out titled In An Iridescent Time (Harcourt, Brace, 1959) at the time of Walter's death, Ruth found a way to continue writing while raising her three young daughters and teaching at various universities around the country as an itinerant poet. Nora Jacobson's film Ruth Stone's Vast Library of the Female Mind chronicles Stone's heroic life story as a poet, mother, and teacher in an hour and seventeen-minute long film that leaves its viewers inspired, enlightened, entertained, and uplifted. A visually beautiful film as well, Ruth Stone's Vast Library of the Female Mind captures the rural grist of Stone's heroic career, leaving no question as to why she has become both a Vermont and national treasure.
MWPA Executive Director and poet Gibson Fay-LeBlanc will moderate a Q&A with Nora Jacobson and Chard deNiord following the film.
This event is free, but you do need to register ahead of time by clicking on the orange button above. Doors open at 6:30 PM, and the film starts at 7 PM.
Nora Jacobson is an award winning filmmaker who writes and directs narrative feature films and documentaries. She is devoted to telling character-driven stories that explore the intersection of place, ethnicity, gender and social justice. Jacobson is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Herb Lockwood Award for Excellence in the Arts, a LEF Moving Image Grant, and numerous other grants from organizations including the National Endowment for the Arts and the Vermont Arts Council. Her films include The Hanji Box about international adoption (Best Narrative Screenplay Eurasian Film Festival; Best Female Protagonist Nevada Women’s Film Festival), Delivered Vacant about gentrification (New York Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival), My Mother’s Early Lovers about family secrets and domestic violence (Maine Int’l Film Festival Audience Award, Best Independent Film Ajijic Festival de Cine), Nothing Like Dreaming about the stigma of mental illness (Lake Placid Film Forum Best of Fest,) and the collaborative 6-part film Freedom & Unity: The Vermont Movie, broadcast on PBS, about the history and culture of Vermont.
Chard deNiord is the author of six books of poetry, including, most recently, In My Unknowing (University of Pittsburgh Press 2020). He is also the author of two books of interviews with eminent American poets: Sad Friends, Drowned Lovers, Stapled Songs, Conversations and Reflections on 20th Century Poetry (Marick Press, 2011) and I Would Lie To You If I Could (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018).
He co-founded The New England College MFA program in Poetry in 2001 and served as its co-director until 2008. deNiord was the eighth poet laureate of Vermont from 2016 to 2019. He also served as a trustee of the Ruth Stone Trust from 2010 to 2021. He retired from teaching at Providence College in 2020, where he is now Professor Emeritus of English and Creative Writing. He serves as board member of the Sundog Poetry Center in Vermont, is the essay editor at Plume Poetry Journal, and lives in Westminster West, Vermont with his wife, Liz.