Poets and Bards Down On The Farm

Gather at the Dudley Farm to join Guilford Poet Laureates Gordy Whiteman and Mark McGuire-Schwartz, actor Norman Marshall, and musician Joe Flood for poems and songs of rural life. We will also hear from and honor the winners of the Guilford High School Poetry Contest.

Presenters:
Songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Joe Flood has traveled a long musical road. He worked the streets of Paris with the Lost Wandering Blues and Jazz Band, written songs with Levon Helm of The Band, won a Gold Record for his work with Blues Traveler, and had on stage and studio encounters with such giants of American music as Pinetop Perkins, Dr. John, Allen Toussaint, and John Sebastian. His 2015 release, “Songs From the Bend in the River” (Jungle Curry Records) is a tribute to three 19th Century songwriters from Middletown, Connecticut where Flood grew up. His latest album, “All Roads Lead to the Blues,” new original songs exploring blues forms and themes and their connections to Afro-Cuban, gospel, rock ’n’ roll, and country music, was released in October of 2021.

Norman Marshall is a veteran of 55 years as a professional actor. He has participated in more than three hundred productions in New York and Hollywood — stage, film, television and radio — as actor, producer or director. Marshall has shared the stage and screen with such notable performers as F. Murray Abraham, Raul Julia, Moses Gunn, Bette Midler, Peter Reigert, Burt Reynolds, Telly Savalas, Barbara Streisand and Harvey Fierstein. He is Co-President of the Guilford Poets Guild with Gwen Gunn.

Gordy Whiteman was born in Guilford in 1929. He is a member of the Guilford Poets Guild. Whiteman is the author of two volumes of poetry: Whitfield Crossing and Home Town Guilford. He is a founding member of The Connecticut Coalition of Poets Laureate and served as Guilford’s Poet Laureate for the last ten years. If he can keep his short-term memory intact, he hopes to complete a third book of poems sometime soon.