2026 ROSE GARDEN READING
Saturday, June 20, 6PM
This annual poetry reading features Connecticut-based poets—
Pat Hale and Debora Kuan
The Bandstand, Elizabeth Park, Hartford CT
Come to Elizabeth Park for a poetry reading and a stroll through the renowned rose garden.
NOTE: You should bring a lawn chair or blanket (no seating is provided)
Anita Durkin will give the introductions...
Debora Kuan is the author of three poetry collections, Women on the Moon (The Word Works), Lunch Portraits (Brooklyn Arts Press), and XING (Saturnalia). She has received a US Fulbright fellowship and residencies at Yaddo, Macdowell, and the Santa Fe Art Institute. Her poetry has appeared in Poetry, The New Republic, Kenyon Review, The Iowa Review, and other publications, and her writing has appeared in Time, Artforum, Art in America, Modern Painters, Paper Monument, and other magazines. She has been anthologized in the Brooklyn Poets Anthology, What Things Cost, and Advanced Language and Literature, and she was the former poet laureate of Wallingford, CT. She is currently the head of copywriting at the MIT Press.
Pat Hale is happily retired from a wide-spanning work life that includes bee disease research, information technology, and teaching English. Her poetry publications include Dry Lightning (Kelsay Books), Seeing Them with My Eyes Closed (Grayson Books), and Composition and Flight (the Hill-Stead Museum). Her prize-winning poems appear in CALYX, Naugatuck River Review, Lily, Third Wednesday and other journals, and have been anthologized in Forgotten Women, Waking Up to the Earth: Connecticut Poets in a Time of Global Climate Crisis, and elsewhere. Her short fiction piece, “A Book of Matches,” was performed by the East Haddam Stage Company in its series, “Plays with Poetry.” She lives in West Hartford in a little house surrounded by tall trees, serves as an associate editor of the Connecticut River Review and on the board of directors for the long-running Riverwood Poetry Series.
This reading is sponsored by the Friends & Enemies of Wallace Stevens (stevenspoetry.org)
with the support of the Elizabeth Park Conservancy (elizabethparkct.org).
For more info, contact: Jim Finnegan – JforJames@aol.com – 860-508-2810