Mishi-maya-gat
Spoken Word & Music Series

Now in its Sixth Season

• Featured musicians, poets and writers
• Monthly events during the school year, September through May (with the exception of December) on the 3rd Thursday from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.
• All events are held in the new Community Commons, Great Path Academy (attached to the Lowe Building). Access from Parking Lot B. Click here for directions to MCC, including a campus map and driving directions.
• Free and open to the public
• Sponsored by the MCC Foundation Annual Fund Campaign
• Hosted by Stephen Campiglio

Mishi-maya-gat is the Algonquian term for “Great Trail System,” a network of foot paths created by the native tribes of Connecticut. Within this system of trails, a “Great Path” connected one region with another. The site of the MCC campus is along one of these great paths and, thus, the naming of Great Path as the street leading to campus. It is in this spirit of historical and cultural significance that the arts series takes its name.

Thursday, May 17

Poets Ellen Doré Watson and D M Gordon

Ellen Doré Watson

Ellen Doré Watson’s most recent volume of poems is Dogged Hearts (Tupelo Press, 2010). Earlier books include This Sharpening, also from Tupelo, and two from Alice James, We Live in Bodies and Ladder Music, winner of the New England/New York award. Her work has appeared in APR, Tin House, Orion, Field, Ploughshares, and The New Yorker. In 1998, Library Journal named her “One of 24 Poets for the 21st Century,” and among her other honors are a Massachusetts Cultural Council Artists Grant, a Rona Jaffe Writers Award, fellowships to the Yaddo and to the MacDowell Colony, Vermont Studio Center’s Zoland Poetry Fellowship, and a National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowship. She has translated a dozen books from the Brazilian Portuguese, including The Alphabet in the Park: Selected Poems of Adélia Prado (Wesleyan University Press), and also co-translated contemporary Arabic language poetry with Saadi Simawe. A second book of Prado translations is forthcoming from Tupelo. Watson lives in western Massachusetts, where she directs the Poetry Center at Smith College and serves as poetry and translation editor of The Massachusetts Review. Other teaching experience includes the Colrain Manuscript Conference (core faculty), the Drew University Low-Residency MFA Program in Poetry and Translation, and a generative writing workshop in Northampton, MA.

D M Gordon

D M Gordon is the author of Fourth World (Adastra Press, 2010) and Nightly, at the Institute of the Possible (Hedgerow Books, 2011), which has just been selected as a “must-read” by the Massachusetts Center for the Book. Gordon’s poems and stories have been published widely in journals such as The Massachusetts Review, Nimrod, The Northwest Review, and Poetry Daily. Her prizes include The Betsy Colquitt Award from descant, the Editor’s Choice Award from The Beacon Street Review, and First Prize for a short story published in Glimmer Train. A Phi Beta Kappa, with a master’s in music from Boston University, she’s the recipient of a 2008 Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellowship in fiction, as well as a 2004 finalist in poetry.  She has been an equestrian and professional musician, and currently works as a free-lance editor in both poetry and prose. An affiliate of Patchwork Farm, she has been on the staff of various international writing retreats with Patricia Lee Lewis, and on the faculty of Writers in Progress.  She created a decade-long weekly public discourse on contemporary poetry in Northampton, MA, where she lives on the outskirts of town with frequent porcupine, bears, wild turkey flocks, and the occasional moose.

8:00 p.m. David Mack, singer/guitarist

David Mack

David Mack has more than 20 years’ experience as a musician, including three national tours, four CDs, and two albums. He is the founder of the Dave Mack Band, a popular nightclub band that plays throughout Connecticut, and whose song list includes a variety of styles, from Blues, R&B, and Rock to Reggae, Funk, and Latin. When Dave was just 19 years old, while attending The Los Angeles Musicians Institute, where he studied with such greats as Scott Henderson and Frank Gambale, he was asked to join the South African pop group, Samaki and the Variations, and recorded and performed on the band’s hit single, “Can’t Stop the Break,” and then toured with the band. After graduating from the Institute, Dave returned to Connecticut. In 1993, he replaced Mikey Chung in Cool Runnings, Hartford’s premier reggae band at the time. Cool Runnings toured for five years and received the Hartford Advocate’s “Best Reggae Band” for each of those five years.  In 1998, Dave formed his own band, Funk Food, which won Hartford Advocate’s “Best Funk Band.” Funk Food eventually became the Dave Mack Band. Dave operates his own recording studio and his first release, “14 Grooves,” sold nearly 7000 copies. For more information on David and his band, find him on Facebook. Dave will perform a solo blues set for his Mishi-maya-gat show.

Upcoming Events

The Series, designed to complement the school year, will not meet in June, July and August, and will return in September. Please check this web page for updates, regarding the 2012-2013 program.