Book Talk Series: Therese L. Broderick, July 3

This is a regular series of book reviews & other literary discussions at the Albany Public Library Main Branch, sponsored by the Friends of the Albany Public Library. This day, local poet Therese Broderick, gave a talk about her poetic technique & a reading from her new book of poems Breath Debt (Page Publishing, 2018).

Therese Broderick has been an active member of the local literary scene for many years, serving on the board of the Hudson Valley Writers Guild in the past, & a frequent reader at area open mic & other poetry events. She recently served as judge of the Tom Nattell Peace Poetry Prize contest. It is with joy & anticipation that we greet her book Breath Debt. She began with a talk about her inspirations & her techniques, & began that with advice for new writers to “engage & persist” — engage with the community & persist in writing — as she paid tribute to the community here & to institutions such as the Hudson Valley Writers Guild & Albany Poets. She is also meets regularly with other local poets to go over each other’s work, to provide & receive comments & feedback.

She described how she studied the book of poems Mayweed by Frannie Lindsay, analyzing the poems & even memorizing some of them. In addition, the poet April Ossman has edited Therese’s poems. She demonstrated some Tai Chi moves & talked of “words dancing with numbers,” all to add to the rhythm & sense & play of words in her poems. She even passed around copies of her poetry workbooks that showed the dynamic energy of her notes, or, more accurately, sketches.  Talking about her book, she praised her publisher Page Publishing for giving her the “certitudes” she needed to produce it as she envisioned it.

One of Therese Broderick's notebooks

Then on to a reading of the poems from Breath Debt, some of which I recognized from past open mics, although in different versions, beginning with the first poem in the book, “Reverdie.” The poems she read dealt with the perils of aging, “Consulting the Shovel,” “Bringing Up the Rear,” “With Ease” (about her personal coach), & “Routine Mammogram.” She also read poems about her parents, “OT & PT” & “At Mother’s Cremation” about her mother, & “His Funeral Mass” & “Heeding the Call to the Colors” about her father. She concluded with the multi-voice “Motet Set to War Poetry” in which she was joined in reading by her husband Frank Robinson & myself.

The usual Q&A extended the exploration of her themes & talk of her technique of exploring the etymology of key words in poems even in other languages such as Spanish & German, which led her to read still one more poem, the tender “Errand with Stranger.”  I look forward to reading the rest of the book & to hearing Therese's new work at area poetry open mics.

The Book Talk Series takes place every Tuesday at 12:15 in the auditorium of the Washington Ave. branch of the Albany Public Library, often a review of a book by a member of the Albany community, sometimes an author discussing her or his book. Come a little early for coffee & home baked sweets & conversations.