Wintonbury Poetry Series (McMW)

The Wintonbury Poetry Series is pleased to host Kim Hunt and Clare Rossini at our December reading.

Kim Hunt: Since retiring 10 years ago from a 40-year career in trial work, Kim has compiled and published four books of rhyme and meter poetry partnering with a visual artist on each occasion. A fifth is forthcoming.

• Deciphering Uncertainty: 124 poems with painter Regina Hunt, 2021
• Harrowing the Hollows: 239 poems with photographer Deborah Charles Wilson, 2022
• Capillary Influences: 199 poems, with painter Joe Nica, 2023
• Lattice of Shadows: 225 poems with photographer Diane Tasho Prince, 2024
• Unsheltered Portals: 200 poems with a polymathic Professor Emeritus in evolutionary biology, 2026

Kim does not market his coffee table books. They are only available by personal request and the uncomfortable feeling of indebtedness that comes with not having to pay for them. Copies are also available at Prosser Library.

Kim is a longstanding member of, and contributor to, the Wit & Wisdom poetry club, Unity Writers, and the Seabury-based Poets and Writers. He regularly attends the Wintonbury Library “Open Mic” series founded by Tom Nicotera and Marilyn Johnson, and intermittently appears at The Buttonwood. He currently is serving as Co-Director of the UConn Adult Learning Program. Kim also publishes a private blog that goes out in a "bcc” email to 250 people, which ends with a URL link to his doppelganger, “Owen Dobbs”; he provides two original poems, generally in sonnet form. 

Clare Rossini has published three collections of poems, the most recent of which is Lingo. Her first, Winter Morning with Crow, won the Akron Poetry Prize. Her poems and essays have appeared in journals and anthologies such as The Paris Review, The Kenyon Review, The Iowa Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, and The Best American Poetry series. The Poetry of Capital,  an anthology Rossini co-edited with Benjamin Grossberg, was published by the University of Wisconsin Press in 2021. Her teaching career includes appointments at Carleton College, Trinity College, and the low-residency MFA Program at Vermont College.

In April of 2025, Rossini was appointed Poet Laureate of West Hartford. She plans to use her three years in the position to plan events for all age levels that bring together poetry and birds. Rossini says, “Birds and poets have long been connected in our cultural tradition, but my motive is more urgent: Due to climate change, bird populations in the northeast have dropped by forty percent. Time for us poets to step up for our winged neighbors.”

We will have an Open Mic after the featured poets' readings.

Teens are welcome to read at the Open Mic!

The Wintonbury Poetry Series and Open Mic are hosted by Sitara Gnanaguru. Questions? Call Mara at 860-243-9721 or email her at mwhitman@libraryconnection.info.