#OldLymeCT
Poets Celebrate Juneteenth in Old Lyme
From the Connecticut College News on June 29, 2022
At the Florence Griswold Museum’s Juneteenth celebration, Conn Professor of English and Poet-in-Residence Kate Rushin read “Fishing for Shad,” a poem she wrote about the story of Jack Howard, who was born enslaved in Old Lyme, Connecticut, in 1795 and was willed to another person at the age of 14.
“I don’t know where I belong
but I know I don’t belong here.
I don’t know much
but I know what is right.
I don’t have much
but I have myself.
I’m not a man yet
but I’m not a child.
I don’t want much
but I want more than this,” she recited.
Rushin was one of four acclaimed Connecticut poets to participate in the June 18 event, which also featured the Nat Reeves Quartet in a celebration of jazz and poetry. Rushin and fellow poets Marilyn Nelson, Rhonda Ward and Antoinette Brim-Bell read a verse cycle written in collaboration with the Old Lyme Witness Stones Project, about 14 African-descended persons once enslaved in Old Lyme. Continue reading.
Juneteenth Commemoration to Feature Jazz Quartet, Poets at Florence Griswold in Old Lyme
By Emilia Otte in the Connecticut Examiner on June 17,
OLD LYME — The town will be ushering in Juneteenth with a mixture of jazz and poetry led by a well-known jazz quartet and four Connecticut poets who will be reading verses in commemoration of slaves who lived in Old Lyme.
The event is a partnership with the Old Lyme Witness Stones Project. The project is modeled after Berlin’s Stolpersteine, or “Stumbling Stones” — individual plaques that appear throughout the city to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust. In Old Lyme, the organization has installed 30 brass plaques in different areas of the town as a way of honoring the lives of the enslaved people who once lived in the town. Continue reading.
