Michael Bradford in Poets' Park

23 August 2012

Julia de Burgos Park

Willimantic CT

Michael Bradford is a poet, a playwright, a scholar… and a citizen of New London. His reading was the final presentation of the season for the Curbstone Foundation in Julia de Burgos Park.

Bradford began the evening with a reading from Nikki Giovanni and then read from his own works.  His spoken word voice as well as the “voice” of his writing have a wide range of emotional and tonal inflection.  Even though the park is outdoors his reading created a sense of intimacy.  

Michael Bradford is a writer who has found and is comfortable with his own voice. 

Among the works he read were pieces inspired by his trip to Spain to absorb the sense of Federico Garcia Lorca.  He also writes about his family, and Harlem.  You Were Not In Harlem is an imagist tour of various parts of New York City including Brooklyn, Columbus Avenue at 110th St., The Upper West Side, East Harlem where the subway comes out from the underground on Park Avenue, and other parts of Harlem. 

In the poem, Would You Wish Me Well, he tells us that, “Wisdom has come suddenly.”

The weather and the poet were pitch perfect.

Other readers at the event were Jude Davis, Marie Anzalone, and Chris Cooke.  This writer was the MC for the event.