Dye & Bleach House Poetry Series (3rd Thursday of the month)

FREE ADMISSION

(DONATIONS GRACIOUSLY ACCEPTED)

3rd Thursday of the month thru May 2026

Welcome to EC-CHAP’s Dye & Bleach House Poetry Series! The series will be facilitated by Steve Veilleux., published author and Poet Laureate of Thompson, CT. All sessions will take place in the Dye & Bleach House Community Gallery, 156 River Road, Willington, CT.

The show’s format will consist of two open mic segments as well as a segment for the featured artist. Intermission will give audience and poet the chance to meet one another and the opportunity to purchase signed publications.

The open-mic segments will provide the opportunity for audience members to read their own original work. We are planning to allow for two half-hour sessions, one at the beginning of the event, and the other at the end. Readers will be given up to five minutes to present, and we will have a signup sheet.

The Featured Readers for December 18th include John Popielaski and Steve Veilleux.

Born and raised on Long Island, JOHN POPIELASKI received a BA in English from SUNY-Stony Brook and an MFA in Creative Writing from American University. He worked in a variety of capacities, from lobsterman to furniture mover, from tent erector to lackey for a tropical biologist, before settling into teaching. For the last twenty-five years, he has taught English at Xavier High School in Middletown. He is the author of the novel Attuning (forthcoming from Broken Tribe Press), That Special Something (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions), the novel The Hollow Middle (Unsolicited Press), Isn’t It Romantic? (Texas Review Press), O, Captain (The Ledge Press), A Brief Eureka for the Alchemists of Peace (Antrim House), and Contemporary Martyrdom (Birch Brook Press).

Thompson's first poet laureate, STEVE VEILLEUX paints with a surreal paintbrush, combining partial and recombined parcels of images into his kaleidoscopic montages. It is the unexpected combinations that often bring his images to life, that certain intangible hook that leads the listener to consider what is lurking within the piece - and further, to force the listener to consider what lies within his own psyche. He works the DBH Poetry Series in Willington Connecticut, and an open-mic series at Wolperdinger Bookends in Putnam. He has been featured locally by Poets at Large and Slightly Offbeat Poets.  His  first poetry book, Event Horizon, is available from Amazon Books, and he is currently working on a second, What the Moleman Said.

Writers who are interested in featuring should reach out to Steve Veilleux by email: Veilleuxs50@gmail.com or phone 860-324-4942.

Please join us for EC-CHAP’s D&BH Poetry Series! This program is hosted by the "Eastern Connecticut Center for History, Art, and Performance" (EC-CHAP) and Steve Veilleux. Doors 6:00pm / Presentation 6:30pm. Free Admission - Donations Accepted

We are pleased to offer our exclusive "BYOB&F" model - Bring Your Own Beverage & Food TM (Wine & Beer Only - I.D. Required).

For more information, please call 860-324-4942.

Dye & Bleach House Poetry Series (3rd Thursday of the month)

FREE ADMISSION

(DONATIONS GRACIOUSLY ACCEPTED)

3rd Thursday of the month thru May 2026

Welcome to EC-CHAP’s Dye & Bleach House Poetry Series! The series will be facilitated by Steve Veilleux., published author and Poet Laureate of Thompson, CT. All sessions will take place in the Dye & Bleach House Community Gallery, 156 River Road, Willington, CT.

The show’s format will consist of two open mic segments as well as a segment for the featured artist. Intermission will give audience and poet the chance to meet one another and the opportunity to purchase signed publications.

The open-mic segments will provide the opportunity for audience members to read their own original work. We are planning to allow for two half-hour sessions, one at the beginning of the event, and the other at the end. Readers will be given up to five minutes to present, and we will have a signup sheet.

The Featured Readers for November 20th include Karen Warinsky and Victoria Nordlund.

Karen Warinsky has published poetry widely since 2011. She is the author of four collections: Gold in Autumn (2020) and Sunrise Ruby (2022 Human Error Publishing,) Dining with War (2023 Alien Buddha Press) and Beauty & Ashes (Kelsay Books, 2025). Her poem “Mirage” won first place in the 2024 Ekphrastic Poetry Trust, she is a 2023 Best of the Net nominee and a former finalist of the Montreal International Poetry Contest. Warinsky coordinates Poets at Large, a group that performs spoken word in MA and CT. https://karenwarinskypoetry.wordpress.com.

Victoria Nordlund is the Poet Laureate of Glastonbury, CT, and lead master teaching artist of the Nook Farm Writers Collaborative at The Mark Twain House & Museum. Her poetry collections Wine-Dark Sea and Binge Watching Winter on Mute are published by Main Street Rag. She is a Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize Nominee, whose work has appeared in Rust+Moth, Chestnut Review, Bending Genres, Connecticut Literary Anthology, Maudlin House, trampset, and elsewhere.

Writers who are interested in featuring should reach out to Steve Veilleux by email: Veilleuxs50@gmail.com or phone 860-324-4942.

Please join us for EC-CHAP’s D&BH Poetry Series! This program is hosted by the "Eastern Connecticut Center for History, Art, and Performance" (EC-CHAP) and Steve Veilleux. Doors 6:00pm / Presentation 6:30pm. Free Admission - Donations Accepted

We are pleased to offer our exclusive "BYOB&F" model - Bring Your Own Beverage & Food TM (Wine & Beer Only - I.D. Required).

For more information, please call 860-324-4942.

Dye & Bleach House Poetry Series (3rd Thursday of the month)

FREE ADMISSION

(DONATIONS GRACIOUSLY ACCEPTED)

3rd Thursday of the month thru May 2026

Welcome to EC-CHAP’s Dye & Bleach House Poetry Series! The series will be facilitated by Steve Veilleux., published author and Poet Laureate of Thompson, CT. All sessions will take place in the Dye & Bleach House Community Gallery, 156 River Road, Willington, CT.

The show’s format will consist of two open mic segments as well as a segment for the featured artist. Intermission will give audience and poet the chance to meet one another and the opportunity to purchase signed publications.

The open-mic segments will provide the opportunity for audience members to read their own original work. We are planning to allow for two half-hour sessions, one at the beginning of the event, and the other at the end. Readers will be given up to five minutes to present, and we will have a signup sheet.

The Featured Readers for October 16th include Sandra Yannone and Philippa Paquette.

Sandra Yannone is the current poet laureate of Old Saybrook and author of two collections from Salmon Poetry, The Glass Studio (2024) and Boats for Women (2019). In April, 2026, Salmon will publish Unsinkable: Poems Inspired by the Titanic, an anthology in which she serves as co-editor. She also hosts the international online reading series Cultivating Voices LIVE Poetry. Visit her at www.sandrayannone.com for more information.

Philippa Paquette graduated from Keele University in England with a double major in Psychology and Biology. She came to America as a Harkness Fellow with the Commonwealth Fund and studied Psychology at Yale University. She worked in private practice and as a school psychologist and after retirement became a Master Naturalist. Philippa has always written poetry for her own delight and recently published her first book, Beyond the Edge. It is available at Arts and Academic Publishing, Pomfret, CT.

Writers who are interested in featuring should reach out to Steve Veilleux by email: Veilleuxs50@gmail.com or phone 860-324-4942.

Please join us for EC-CHAP’s D&BH Poetry Series! This program is hosted by the "Eastern Connecticut Center for History, Art, and Performance" (EC-CHAP) and Steve Veilleux. Doors 6:00pm / Presentation 6:30pm. Free Admission - Donations Accepted

We are pleased to offer our exclusive "BYOB&F" model - Bring Your Own Beverage & Food TM (Wine & Beer Only - I.D. Required).

For more information, please call 518-791-9474.

Dye & Bleach House Poetry Series (3rd Thursday of the month)

FREE ADMISSION

(DONATIONS GRACIOUSLY ACCEPTED)

3rd Thursday of the month thru May 2026

Welcome to EC-CHAP’s Dye & Bleach House Poetry Series! The Season’s first session will begin on September 18th.

The Series will be facilitated by Steve Veilleux., published author and Poet Laureate of Thompson, CT. All sessions will take place in the Dye & Bleach House Community Gallery, 156 River Road, Willington, CT.

The show’s format will consist of two open mic segments as well as a segment for the featured artist. Intermission will give audience and poet the chance to meet one another and the opportunity to purchase signed publications.

The open-mic segments will provide the opportunity for audience members to read their own original work. We are planning to allow for two half-hour sessions, one at the beginning of the event, and the other at the end. Readers will be given up to five minutes to present, and we will have a signup sheet.

The Featured Readers for September 18th include Pegi Dietz Shea and Mark McGuire-Schwartz.

Pegi Dietz Shea, a two-time winner of the CT Book Award, is the author of more than 500 published articles, essays, books and poems for adults and young readers. The Weight of Kindling, her first full-length collection of poetry for adults, was published by Grayson Books in 2022. Pegi has taught Creative Writing at UCONN, the Mark Twain House, and the Institute of Children’s Literature; and she’s conducted writing workshops and presentations at hundreds of schools, libraries and conferences across the country. She was the inaugural Poet Laureate of Vernon, CT, and now serves as President of the Connecticut Coalition of Poets Laureate. She directs Poetry Rocks, a quarterly reading series she founded in 2017. She is currently working on Uncharted: The Personal Voyage of Jeanne Baret, a novel-in-verse about the first woman to circumnavigate the earth.

Mark McGuire-Schwartz strives to find a tad of originality in this world so overcrowded with words. This led to his creating a new poetic form, the Seventeen. Further, he believes that he may be the first person to ever use the phrase “iffy, itchy, icy, insular” in a poem. Mark is the Guilford Poet Laureate. His books include Loss and Laughs, Love and Fauna and 289, a book of 17s. His poems and fiction have been published in numerous journals and on the bottoms of rocks.

Writers who are interested in featuring should reach out to Steve Veilleux by email: Veilleuxs50@gmail.com or phone 860-324-4942.

Please join us for EC-CHAP’s D&BH Poetry Series! This program is hosted by the "Eastern Connecticut Center for History, Art, and Performance" (EC-CHAP) and Steve Veilleux. Doors 6:00pm / Presentation 6:30pm. Free Admission - Donations Accepted

We are pleased to offer our exclusive "BYOB&F" model - Bring Your Own Beverage & Food TM (Wine & Beer Only - I.D. Required).

For more information, please call 518-791-9474.

Dye & Bleach House Poetry Series (3rd Thursday of the month)

FREE ADMISSION

(DONATIONS GRACIOUSLY ACCEPTED)

Welcome to the Dye & Bleach House Poetry Series!. All sessions will take place in the Dye & Bleach House Community Gallery, 156 River Road, Willington, CT.

The Featured Readers for May 15th include Susan Powers and Brad Davis.

The show’s format will consist of two open mic segments as well as a segment for the featured artist. Intermission will give audience and poet the chance to meet one another and the opportunity to purchase signed publications.

The open-mic segments will provide the opportunity for audience members to read their own original work. We are planning to allow for two half-hour sessions, one at the beginning of the event, and the other at the end. Readers will be given up to five minutes to present, and we will have a signup sheet.

Susan Powers (MA, English Literature and Creative Writing, Ohio University; Ph.D. Clinical Psychology, Saybrook Institute) is currently Scotland, CT's inaugural poet laureate. She promotes literacy by conducting poetry workshops at local schools and libraries. Poems from her chapbook, Break the Spell, have appeared in Tiferet and Sixfold, and you will find more of her poetry in the Orenaug Mountain Journal. Her poetry also appears in the 2024 Personal Freedom anthology. In February of 2024, Susan was awarded a 10-day residency by the Writers Colony at Dairy Hollow to work on her new eco-poetry collection which will be published by the Metaphysical Fox Press in December of 2025.

Brad Davis (MFA, Vermont College of Fine Arts) is a Canadian currently living in Putnam, Connecticut, on Nipmuc land. Poems have appeared in Image, Poetry magazine, The Paris Review, Vallum, JAMA, Puerto del Sol, Brilliant Corners, Spiritus, and many other journals. Brad’s most recent collection is On the Way to Putnam: New, Selected, & Early Poems. His chapbook, Short List of Wonders, won the Sunken Garden Poetry Prize, and a poem won an AWP Intro Journal Award. braddavispoet.com

Writers who are interested in featuring should reach out to Steve Veilleux by email: Veilleuxs50@gmail.com or phone 860-324-4942.

Please join us for EC-CHAP’s NEW Spoken Word Series! This program is hosted by the "Eastern Connecticut Center for History, Art, and Performance" (EC-CHAP) and Steve Veilleux. Doors 6:00pm / Presentation 6:30pm. Free Admission - Donations Accepted

Soft drinks and snacks available. We are pleased to offer our exclusive "BYOB&F" model - Bring Your Own Beverage & Food TM (Wine & Beer Only - I.D. Required).

For more information, please call 518-791-9474.

Dye & Bleach House Poetry Series (3rd Thursday of the month)

FREE ADMISSION

(DONATIONS GRACIOUSLY ACCEPTED)

Welcome to the Dye & Bleach House Poetry Series!. All sessions will take place in the Dye & Bleach House Community Gallery, 156 River Road, Willington, CT.

The Featured Readers for April 17th include Paul Richmond and MW Murphy.

The show’s format will consist of two open mic segments as well as a segment for the featured artist. Intermission will give audience and poet the chance to meet one another and the opportunity to purchase signed publications.

The open-mic segments will provide the opportunity for audience members to read their own original work. We are planning to allow for two half-hour sessions, one at the beginning of the event, and the other at the end. Readers will be given up to five minutes to present, and we will have a signup sheet.

Paul Richmond was awarded Beat Poet Laureate three times. He is best described as political, deadpan and wryly humorous delivered in his own style. He has been called, “Assassin of Apathy” He has performed nationally and internationally. He created the project “Do It Now.” He is also a publisher of over 55 writers and has 7 books himself.

For more. - www.humanerrorpublishing.com

MW Murphy writes both fiction & poetry. She has a piece in the anthology Gathered Light (Three O’Clock Press, 2013), and a short story in the anthology A Shadow Map (CCM, 2017). Her work has also appeared in two online poetry mags “Breadcrumbs Magazine” (2019), and “Yes Poetry” (2020, 2021), as well as in the ”Connecticut Bards Anthology” (2023, 2024) and “We Are Beat” anthologies (2019, 2022, 2023, 2024), and the “CC&D Anthology” (2023, 2024). MW was a “featured poet” at the Rose Room (Webster, MA) in May 2023. She has done readings from her fiction & poetry at various events in bookstores, coffee houses, and parks.

Writers who are interested in featuring should reach out to Steve Veilleux by email: Veilleuxs50@gmail.com or phone 860-324-4942.

Please join us for EC-CHAP’s NEW Spoken Word Series! This program is hosted by the "Eastern Connecticut Center for History, Art, and Performance" (EC-CHAP) and Steve Veilleux. Doors 6:00pm / Presentation 6:30pm. Free Admission - Donations Accepted

Soft drinks and snacks available. We are pleased to offer our exclusive "BYOB&F" model - Bring Your Own Beverage & Food TM (Wine & Beer Only - I.D. Required).

For more information, please call 518-791-9474.

Dye & Bleach House Poetry Series (3rd Thursday of the month)

FREE ADMISSION

(DONATIONS GRACIOUSLY ACCEPTED)

Welcome to the Dye & Bleach House Poetry Series!. All sessions will take place in the Dye & Bleach House Community Gallery, 156 River Road, Willington, CT.

The Featured Readers for March 20th include Robert Eugene Perry and Julia Paul.

The show’s format will consist of two open mic segments as well as a segment for the featured artist. Intermission will give audience and poet the chance to meet one another and the opportunity to purchase signed publications.

The open-mic segments will provide the opportunity for audience members to read their own original work. We are planning to allow for two half-hour sessions, one at the beginning of the event, and the other at the end. Readers will be given up to five minutes to present, and we will have a signup sheet.

Robert Eugene Perry is a native of Massachusetts and the author of six books. His most recent collection of poetry Earthsongs, was published by Human Error Publishing in 2022. A combined re-release of his earlier chapbooks was released as Sacred Mystic Dance on his own imprint Metaphysical Fox Press in 2024.

His poetry has appeared in numerous anthologies & publications, he was a finalist in the 2023 Beals Prize for Poetry and his poem Heard Steet/ Hadwen Park in Winter was a winner in WCPA’s 2024 Poems in and out of Places. Perry has emceed the monthly Open Mic at Booklovers’ Gourmet in Webster, MA (USA) since May 2017.

For more information, please visit: https://roberteugeneperry.myportfolio.com

Julia M. Paul is author of two full-length collections, Shook, (Grayson Books) and Table with Burning Candle, (Cornerstone Press) and a chapbook, Staring Down the Tracks (The Poetry Box). Her poems are widely published in journals and anthologies. Her poem, “Dear Coroner, How Could You Know,” appears in the 2023 Pushcart Prize XLVII Best of the Small Presses anthology. As a strong believer in poetry as a powerful and necessary form of communication. Paul leads the Riverwood Poetry Series, a long-running poetry reading series in Hartford, CT. She is an elder law attorney in Manchester, Connecticut, where she also resides.

Writers who are interested in featuring should reach out to Steve Veilleux by email: Veilleuxs50@gmail.com or phone 860-324-4942.

Please join us for EC-CHAP’s NEW Spoken Word Series! This program is hosted by the "Eastern Connecticut Center for History, Art, and Performance" (EC-CHAP) and Steve Veilleux. Doors 6:00pm / Presentation 6:30pm. Free Admission - Donations Accepted

Soft drinks and snacks available. We are pleased to offer our exclusive "BYOB&F" model - Bring Your Own Beverage & Food TM (Wine & Beer Only - I.D. Required).

For more information, please call 518-791-9474.

Dye & Bleach House Poetry Series (3rd Thursday of the month)

FREE ADMISSION

(DONATIONS GRACIOUSLY ACCEPTED)

Welcome to the Dye & Bleach House Poetry Series!. All sessions will take place in the Dye & Bleach House Community Gallery, 156 River Road, Willington, CT.

The Featured Readers for February 20th include Claudia McGhee and Janet E. Aalfs.

The show’s format will consist of two open mic segments as well as a segment for the featured artist. Intermission will give audience and poet the chance to meet one another and the opportunity to purchase signed publications.

The open-mic segments will provide the opportunity for audience members to read their own original work. We are planning to allow for two half-hour sessions, one at the beginning of the event, and the other at the end. Readers will be given up to five minutes to present, and we will have a signup sheet.

Claudia McGhee has dealt in and with words for decades as a software technical writer, poet, fiction writer, journalist, eBook producer, and editor. Thomas Lux said of Claudia's chapbook, Paperlight (Finishing Line Press):

“There are many ways to read the simple but loaded title, Paperlight. I choose to read it as light on a page being some-thing written on that page. I choose the affirmative light. And this book’s pages are washed in the light of lucid, piercing, and original poems.”

Claudia has studied with Billy Collins, Carolyn Forché, Dana Gioia, Marie Howe, Kate Knapp Johnson, Galway Kinnell, Thomas Lux, and Paul Violi. Most recently, her poems appeared in Tiny Seed Journal, Voices of the Grieving Heart anthology, the New Haven-based zine Circumference, and her local Neighbors newspapers. Claudia loves attending open mics, and was one of the poets featured in the online “Poems from Connecticut’s Four Corners” program sponsored by the Ridgefield Library (CT). While her technical writing has been translated into six languages and distributed worldwide, now that she is retired, she is working hard to ensure her words read properly in American English.

Janet E. Aalfs is a multidisciplinary artist, arts educator, and activist. Poet laureate of Northampton, MA (2003-2005), 8th-degree black belt, and healing movement instructor, Janet is founder and director of Lotus Peace Arts at Heron's Bridge/Valley Women's Martial Arts, a non-profit community school since 1977. She is the recipient of awards for her teaching as well as prizes for her poetry, and has been featured at many events including the Dodge Poetry Festival. Janet enjoys performing spoken word combined with martial arts dance that she calls Poemotion©. Her poems have been widely published, including 3 full-length collections, most recently What the Dead Want Me To Know (Human Error Publishing, 2022), and several chapbooks.

Writers who are interested in featuring should reach out to Steve Veilleux by email: Veilleuxs50@gmail.com or phone 860-324-4942.

Please join us for EC-CHAP’s NEW Spoken Word Series! This program is hosted by the "Eastern Connecticut Center for History, Art, and Performance" (EC-CHAP) and Steve Veilleux. Doors 6:00pm / Presentation 6:30pm. Free Admission - Donations Accepted

Soft drinks and snacks available. We are pleased to offer our exclusive "BYOB&F" model - Bring Your Own Beverage & Food TM (Wine & Beer Only - I.D. Required).

For more information, please call 518-791-9474.