“Not your ordinary poetry reading”
science, poetry, and memoir in three voices
Dust is the Only Secret: Assent to Life
with Fan Ogilvie, Ursula Goodenough and Janet Holladay
Date: Saturday, May 18
Time: 4:00PM
Location: Francine Kelly Gallery
​Fee: Free!
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Join us on Saturday, May 18th at Featherstone for a book reading with poet and artist Fan Ogilvie and guests readers Usula Goodenough (professor of biology) and Janet Holladay (designer and editor of the series). They will be reading from Fan's new series of three poetry books: Dust is the Only Secret: Assent to Life (Book one: To Understand; Book two: To Incorporate; Book three: Then Let It Go).  It includes passages and a scientific arc from Ursula Goodenough's The Sacred Depths of Nature, and passages from Fan's early memoir, Knot: a Life.

Fan Ogilvie Bio:

• Fan has taught English and poetry in Washington, DC, New Haven, CT, New York City, NY, and Martha's Vineyard, MA.
• In 1984 she received a Chester H. Jones Foundation commendation award.
• In 2008 Fan published YOU selected poems and KNOT: A LIFE a memoir.
• Selected as the second Poet Laureate of West Tisbury, MA (2009-2012).
• In 2016 EASINESSES FOUND poems and paintings was published. It received special recognition from the Washington Independent Review of Poetry and Grace Cavalieri, creator of the Poet and the Poem series.
• She worked three years at the Dukes County House of Correction, where she and Katie Upson published two volumes of poetry by the inmates...and learned the lyrics to Rap music.
• She is now facilitator of the Cleaveland House Poetry Workshop, the oldest (60 years) continuous poetry group in the USA.
• Fan, also a painter, had a one person show at Featherstone Center for the Arts, two shows at the West Tisbury Public Library, and has had shows in Chilmark Public Library and Galaxy Gallery in Oak Bluffs, all in Massachusetts.
• Fan and Arnie Reisman co-edited a collection of Judith Neeld’s poetry 2019, Judith Neeld Collected Poems. 
• In 2020, Fan published The Berth: American Themes in Poems and Images, a conversation between a contemporary poet and a passenger on the Mayflower 400 years ago answering the question: what has happened to the dreams and experiment in democracy between then and now in America.
• In 2024 Fan published Dust is the Only Secret: Assent to Life, a book of poetry and paintings of the last three years — her 'Whale' of a collection— a lifetime in the making.
• Fan heads the committee to select the 2024-2026 Martha’s Vineyard Poet Laureate.