Shelter Island Summer Dialogue: Richard Varney Poetry Reading

Shelter Island poet Virginia Walker, will host the Seventh Annual Richard Varney Poetry Reading along with Fran Castan on Saturday, June 14, at 5 p.m. 

The evening, under the tent at the Community Center or inside if the weather is inclement, will feature readings by Ms. Castan and Ms. Walker. They will be followed by members of the Art/Rich Poetry Roundtable, Martin Ainbinder, Yvette Janssen, Karen Kiaer and Diana Malcolmson reading works from the Library’s Richard Varney Poetry Collection.

Virginia Walker is the co-author of a book of poetry, “Neuron Mirror.” Her poems have been published in local and national publications. 

Ms. Walker, who was a finalist for the Suffolk County Poet Laureate, is a retired professor of English at Dowling College and Suffolk County Community College.

Fran Castan, named Long Island Poet of the Year by the Walt Whitman Birthplace Association, is the author of “The Widow’s Quilt” and “Venice: City That Paints Itself.”

She has won many awards, including the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America and the United Kingdom’s 2021 Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine.

Professor Walker will reflect on the legacy of Richard Varney, who died in 2018. She has written: “Richard Varney was a brilliant apostle of poetry. He thought poetry contained the wisdom of humanity. He read poetry in depth and was fascinated by the lives of poets. While at Harvard he was on the board of the Harvard Poetry Review.”