Poetry Slam Garden Party
- artupfrontstreet
- Jun 4
- 4 min read
Updated: 7 days ago
Join us for a beautiful afternoon of words, music, art, and community at Poetry Slam Garden Party—hosted by Adam Roberts and Art Up Front Street in the intimate outdoor garden behind the studios. Tickets here.
Escape from the everyday and find inspiration at this summertime gathering with live readings from local poets Adam Roberts , Jessica Purdy, and Lauren WB Vermette, plus original music from poet and musician Todd Hearon. Upon entering the garden, clarinet duo Fiske n' Fell, will be playing pieces perfect for a summer party.
Adam will share selections from his debut memoir, Every Day, Luv (and a sneak peek from his next book). In 2021, Adam wrote a poem for his wife, every single day. It started as a simple New Year's resolution to rekindle romance and became so much more.
As the poetry flows, artists will be live-painting in the garden, creating visual art in real time. Artists Natalie Eve Marquis and Rose Bryant will have brushes & canvases out while using the garden inspirations as subject matter. Sip on wine or a refreshing beverage, enjoy dessert and coffee from Enna Chocolate, and take in the atmosphere of this literary slam under the garden shade.
Whether you're flying solo or bringing friends, come for the words, for the music, and leave feeling better than when you arrived.
Reservations are needed.
Tickets are $10 and can be purchased HERE
Plenty of free street parking.
(This is a rain or shine event and if needed we will continue the party inside in our beautiful front gallery!)
For any questions, contact Rose Bryant at Art Up Front Street Studios & Gallery
120 Front Street, Exeter, NH
Adam Roberts:
In 2021, he wrote something for my wife, every single day. What started as a simple New Year's resolution to rekindle romance ended up as a chronicle of a couple surviving pandemic, loss, and the sandwich-generation rollercoaster of caring for both a special-needs child and live-in elderly parent.
Prior to writing full time, Adam Roberts worked for two decades in non-profit arts and education administration. Along the way, he wrote a musical theater adaptation of the children's classic book Harold and the Purple Crayon and the TV pilot Life Without Green. He is the creator and host of the Arts in America podcast. When not scratching poems or other bits of his brain on random scraps of paper, Adam lives on the New Hampshire Seacoast with his wife, daughter, guinea pig, and cat.
Jessica Purdy:
Jessica Purdy is the author of STARLAND and Sleep in a Strange House (Nixes Mate, 2017 and 2018), The Adorable Knife (Grey Book Press, 2023), You're Never the Same (Seven Kitchens Press, 2023), and Learning the Names (Finishing Line Press, 2015). Sleep in a Strange House was a finalist for the NH Literary Award for Poetry. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing with a concentration in Poetry from Emerson College. She has worked as an art teacher and a writing teacher. Currently, she teaches Poetry Workshops and Creative Writing at Southern New Hampshire University. In 2024 she attended the Martha's Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing on a fellowship. 2015, she was a featured reader at the Abroad Writers’ Conference in Dublin, Ireland. Her poems have been nominated for The Pushcart Prize, Best Spiritual Literature, Best New Poets, and Best of the Net. Her flash fiction has been nominated for Best Micro Fiction. She was poetry editor for the anthology, Ten Piscataqua Writers 2022.
Todd Hearon:
Todd Hearon is an award-winning poet and songwriter, born in Fort Worth, Texas, and raised in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. The hymns and folk songs of his youth continue to influence his music, along with more edgy, contemporary Americana and Country-Rock sounds. He played bass and guitar for The Spin, one of the most successful alternative rock bands to come out of the Dallas Deep Ellum scene in the 1990s. After a career spanning six years and four albums, extensive touring and the cultivation of a broad fan base, he hung up his musical hat for graduate school in Boston, earning his Masters and PhD in English, Editorial- and Irish Studies, and co-founding The Bridge Theater Company, an independent troupe in Boston’s Theater District, for which he wrote and directed plays. He’s the author of three collections of poems — Strange Land (2010), No Other Gods (2015) and Crows in Eden (2022) — and a novella, DO GEESE SEE GOD (2021). He has received a PEN/New England ”Discovery” Award, the Friends of Literature Prize (Poetry magazine and the Poetry Foundation), the Rumi Poetry Prize (Arts & Letters) and the Campbell Corner Poetry Prize (Sarah Lawrence College). He was the Dobie Paisano Fellow/Writer-in-Residence at the University of Texas in Austin and served as the Dartmouth Poet-in-Residence at the Frost Place in Franconia, New Hampshire. His poems, essays and plays have appeared widely in literary journals in this country and abroad.
Lauren WB Vermette:
@wbvermette is the 14th Poet Laureate of Portsmouth, NH.
Lauren’s hairstylist once asked her if poetry was her hobby; she replied, No, it is my identity. Poetry has been her savior, her refuge, her way of life, and most importantly, it is how she connects with others.
She is very shy by nature, but poetry allows her to open up, and that opening, in turn, lets others in. For her, there is an intimacy in how poetry paints pictures on the canvas of the mind, and then stretches, root-like, to the chambers of the heart. Poetry moves, and is moving.
Lauren has been a dedicated member of the poetry community of Portsmouth and the seacoast for 11 years and has hosted The Hoot and Beat Night Readings both now in their 25th year. Lauren’s work has appeared in Rat’s Ass Review Journal, Sledgehammer, Solstice, and Underground Writers Association, among others.
Her first collection of poetry, And The Form Falls Away (2018), was published by Bee Monk Press. She makes her home in Dover New Hampshire.
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