Michael Cervas Visiting Writers Program

The Michael Cervas Visiting Writers Program is named in honor of Michael Cervas who taught English from 1986-2020 and who initiated two longstanding visiting writers programs: The Westminster Poet Series and the Friday Nights at Westminster series of readings. The Michael Cervas Visiting Writers Program is supported by generous gifts from the Ford-Goldfarb English Department Enrichment Fund, the McKinley Fund, and the Friday Nights at Westminster Fund.  

About Michael Cervas
During his 34-year tenure on the Westminster faculty, Michael taught all levels of English; coached basketball, soccer, track, baseball, golf and squash; worked as a corridor supervisor in Alumni House; and presided as department head for three decades. Having retired from his full-time appointment to the faculty at the end of the 2019-2020 academic year, Michael continues to direct the Visiting Writers Program.

Gordon McKinley Friday Nights at Westminster

The Gordon McKinley Friday Nights at Westminster series began in 2009-2010 to coincide with the opening of the Armour Academic Center. Held six times a year (twice each trimester), the program invites writers to campus for a Friday evening reading followed by Saturday morning visits with English classes. English teachers typically introduce students to the visiting writers' works in advance, fostering an informed audience.

The series has featured nationally renowned poets, essayists, novelists, jazz musicians, and singer-songwriters, including Jennifer Egan, Ron Carlson, Emily St. John Mandel, Anthony Doerr, Monica Wood, Dar Williams, Kris Delmhorst, Nat Reeves, and Mark Erelli. Local talents like Colin McEnroe, Rand Richards Cooper, Lynn Hoffman, Jonathan Gilman, Gina Barreca, and Rob Duguay have also participated. Each evening begins with a reading by a student or faculty member.

The series is named for Gordon McKinley, a Westminster faculty member from 1956–1986 who chaired the English department and taught creative writing and public speaking. The program is supported by the Gordon McKinley Friday Nights at Westminster Fund, endowed by Nathan Hayward '61.

2024-2025 Schedule

List of 1 items.

  • Friday Nights at Westminster 2024-2025

    Please join us for Friday Nights at Westminster, a series of readings and concerts held at Westminster School during the 2024-2025 academic year on selected Friday nights, (occasionally on other nights of the week).
     
    The events begin at 7 p.m. and are free and open to members of the public. Events are held in either the Westminster Centennial Center or the Gund Reading Room of the school’s Armour Academic Center. We will let you know where each event will be held once the decision is made. Parking is available in the parking lot adjacent to Armour.
    Friday, Oct. 11
    Nick Fuller Googins 

    Nick Fuller Googins is the author of the novel, The Great Transition (Atria Books). His short fiction and essays have appeared in The Paris Review, Men’s Health, The Sun, The Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere. He lives in Maine, and works as an elementary school teacher. He is a member of the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance, as well as the National Education Association, the largest labor union in the United States.

    Friday, Dec. 13
    Daniel Donaghy 

    Daniel Donaghy is the author of five poetry collections, most recently Somerset, which was named co-winner of the 2019 Paterson Poetry Prize. His previous poetry collections are Start with the Trouble (University of Arkansas Press, 2009), winner of the University of Arkansas Poetry Prize and the Paterson Award for Literary Excellence and a Finalist for the Connecticut Book Award and the Milt Kessler Poetry Book Award, and Streetfighting (BkMk Press, 2005), a Paterson Poetry Prize Finalist. He earned a BA in English from Kutztown University, an MA in English/Creative Writing from Hollins College (now University), an MFA in Creative Writing (Poetry) from Cornell University, and a PhD in English from the University of Rochester. Donaghy was awarded the 2022 Auburn Witness Poetry Prize and a 2019 Artist Fellowship by the Connecticut Office of the Arts. He is Professor of English at Eastern Connecticut State University, where he edits Here: a poetry journal with his students, and serves as Poet Laureate of Windham, CT. He grew up in the Kensington section of Philadelphia, PA, which has inspired many of his poems.

    Friday, Jan. 24
    Sarah Larson 
    Bio coming soon

    Friday, April 25
    Sophfronia Scott

    Sophfronia Scott grew up in Lorain, Ohio, a hometown she shares with author Toni Morrison. She holds a BA in English from Harvard and an MFA in writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She began her career as an award-winning magazine journalist for Time, where she co-authored the groundbreaking cover story “Twentysomething,” the first study identifying the demographic group known as Generation X, and People. When her first novel, All I Need to Get By, was published by St. Martin’s Press in 2004 Sophfronia was nominated for best new author at the African American Literary Awards and hailed by Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. as “potentially one of the best writers of her generation.”

    Her latest book is The Seeker and the Monk: Everyday Conversations with Thomas Merton. Sophfronia’s other books include Unforgivable Love, Love’s Long Line, Doing Business By the Book, and This Child of Faith: Raising a Spiritual Child in a Secular World, co-written with her son Tain. Her essays, short stories, and articles have appeared in numerous publications including Yankee Magazine, The Christian Century, North American Review, NewYorkTimes.com, and O, The Oprah Magazine. Her essays “Hope On Any Given Day,” “The Legs On Which I Move,” and “Why I Didn’t Go to the Firehouse” are listed among the Notables in the Best American Essays series. 

    Sophfronia is the recipient of a 2020 Artist Fellowship Grant from the Connecticut Office of the Arts.  She has taught at Regis University’s Mile High MFA and Bay Path University’s MFA in Creative Nonfiction. She’s also delivered craft talks and held workshops at the Yale Writers’ Workshop, Meacham Writers’ Workshop, and the Hobart Festival of Women Writers. Currently Sophfronia is the founding director of Alma College’s MFA in Creative Writing, a low-residency graduate program based in Alma, Michigan. She lives in Sandy Hook, Connecticut where she continues to fight a losing battle against the weeds in her flower beds.

Westminster Poet Series

The Westminster Poet Series began in 1999 when Linda Pastan, at the time the Poet Laureate of the State of Maryland, came to Westminster to give an evening reading and visit with English classes the following day. The second poet in the series was Billy Collins, who had just been named United States Poet Laureate. Since then, the school has welcomed award-winning poets from all around the United States to campus for two-day visits. Westminster Poets have been United States Poets Laureate, State of Connecticut Poets Laureate, Pulitzer Prize winners, and National Book Award winners.

January Gill O’Neil Named Westminster Poet for 2024-2025
 
The English Department is delighted to announce that January Gill O’Neil has been selected as the Westminster Poet for 2024-2025. 
 
O’Neil is an associate professor at Salem State University and the author of four acclaimed books of poetry: Glitter Road (2024), Rewilding (2018), Misery Islands (2014), and Underlife (2009). She has long been active in the New England poetry scene. From 2012-2018, she served as the executive director of the Massachusetts Poetry Festival, and she currently serves on the boards of the Association of Writers & Writing Programs and Montserrat College of Art.

Former Westminster Poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil says about O’Neil’s latest collection: "The alluring poems in Glitter Road delve into past heartbreaks and the exquisite joy of family and new found love in a constantly changing world. In sure and talented hands like O’Neil’s, vibrant landscapes whirl, take root, and break bread with ghosts. It's clear these heart-filled poems will have a full and magnificent life of their own." Poet Kelli Russell Agadon writes, "In Glitter Road, the brilliant and beautiful collection of poems by January Gill O’Neil, we are taken from
truth to tenderness, old love to new love, the Northeast to the deep South, and everywhere in between. O’Neil is an engaging lyric storyteller who moves us seamlessly from Tina Turner to the legacy of Emmett Till to cartwheels, a Hallmark card that hasn’t been invented yet, and into
John Grisham’s bed. O’Neil writes, “I’ll take my miracles however they appear/these days”—and how can we not praise the wounded world with her? Whether writing about Blackness, body, family, nature or nurture, love or loss, O’Neil always keeps a sense of hope and humor.”

bout poetry, O’Neil has written: “Poetry is power. Making the choice to sit down and write or read a poem is power. It’s a choice. It’s self-care. It’s the start of a revolution. It’s change. Like a photo, a poem captures a moment. And that is powerful.”

What is especially appealing about O’Neil’s poems is the way they explore a wide range of themes and subjects in language that is both accessible and scintillating. She is also a very engaging reader of her own poems. Here are a few links to explore if you want to know more
about January Gill O’Neil: http://poets.org/poet/january-gill-oneil,
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/january-oneil, and http://www.januarygilloneil.com/.

O’Neil will be visiting Westminster from Feb. 24-25. She will give an all-school reading Monday morning, Feb. 24 and speak with English classes during the academic day on both Monday and Tuesday.

And here are a few of O’Neil’s poems:

Elation

In the city’s center is an unwalled forest:
a dense plot of cedars so thick their canopy
keeps light from reaching the ground.

We gaze at the stretched-out stalks—
Etiolation, you say, pointing skyward,
but all I hear is elation.

It’s the elongation of stems,
the branches growing up, not out,
their long trunks turned white.

They claim this space as their own,
making the most of what’s given them.
We listen to spindly trees creaking—

rocking chairs on a wooden porch,
the clatter of branches like the chatter
between old, coupled voices

when no one is around.

Cartwheel

And when no one is looking

I will spin my Ferris-wheel-body
into a patch of late autumn leaves,
pretend I am a kaleidoscope
in what I can only describe 
as a soul walk, 
my neurons navigating 
how fast and how hard 
I move in space. 

I should be dead
or at best badly injured,
fighting gravity in jeans
and an oversized sweatshirt
that flips above my head,
each move betraying me  
as the revolution happens.
I have never been a gymnast, 
I’m not limber, can’t to this day 
touch my toes or do the splits. 
How have I not broken a bone?

Sooner or later, all our graves 
come for us—my legs 
cloud-swimming toward 
the coming world.  
 
Back straight, tummy tucked,
my stance wide and precise 
as I wager a bet on myself. 
What I want to say is this:
all this time, I have been able 
to balance my little life in my hands.
That I go through the turn
and keep landing on my feet  
is a goddamn miracle.

Hoodie
A gray hoodie will not protect my son
from rain, from the New England cold.

I see the partial eclipse of his face
as his head sinks into the half-dark

and shades his eyes. Even in our
quiet suburb with its unlocked doors,

I fear for his safety—the darkest child
on our street in the empire of blocks.

Sometimes I don’t know who he is anymore
traveling the back roads between boy and man.

He strides a deep stride, pounds a basketball
into wet pavement. Will he take his shot

or is he waiting for the open-mouthed
orange rim to take a chance on him? I sing

his name to the night, ask for safe passage
from this borrowed body into the next  

and wonder who could mistake him
for anything but good.

List of 3 items.

  • Elation

    In the city’s center is an unwalled forest:
    a dense plot of cedars so thick their canopy
    keeps light from reaching the ground.

    We gaze at the stretched-out stalks—
    Etiolation, you say, pointing skyward,
    but all I hear is elation.

    It’s the elongation of stems,
    the branches growing up, not out,
    their long trunks turned white.

    They claim this space as their own,
    making the most of what’s given them.
    We listen to spindly trees creaking—

    rocking chairs on a wooden porch,
    the clatter of branches like the chatter
    between old, coupled voices

    when no one is around.
  • Cartwheel

    And when no one is looking
    I will spin my Ferris-wheel-body
    into a patch of late autumn leaves,
    pretend I am a kaleidoscope
    in what I can only describe 
    as a soul walk, 
    my neurons navigating 
    how fast and how hard 
    I move in space. 

    I should be dead
    or at best badly injured,
    fighting gravity in jeans
    and an oversized sweatshirt
    that flips above my head,
    each move betraying me  
    as the revolution happens.
    I have never been a gymnast, 
    I’m not limber, can’t to this day 
    touch my toes or do the splits. 
    How have I not broken a bone?
    Sooner or later, all our graves 
    come for us—my legs 
    cloud-swimming toward 
    the coming world.  
     
    Back straight, tummy tucked,
    my stance wide and precise 
    as I wager a bet on myself. 
    What I want to say is this:
    all this time, I have been able 
    to balance my little life in my hands.
    That I go through the turn
    and keep landing on my feet  
    is a goddamn miracle.
  • Hoodie

    A gray hoodie will not protect my son
    from rain, from the New England cold.

    I see the partial eclipse of his face
    as his head sinks into the half-dark

    and shades his eyes. Even in our
    quiet suburb with its unlocked doors,

    I fear for his safety—the darkest child
    on our street in the empire of blocks.

    Sometimes I don’t know who he is anymore
    traveling the back roads between boy and man.

    He strides a deep stride, pounds a basketball
    into wet pavement. Will he take his shot

    or is he waiting for the open-mouthed
    orange rim to take a chance on him? I sing

    his name to the night, ask for safe passage
    from this borrowed body into the next  

    and wonder who could mistake him
    for anything but good.

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