gallery
For directions to the studios please call us in Rochester at 330-0333 or check these maps.

In Rochester we are located downtown next to the court house at 56 North Main Street. Park in front or across the street in the free lot behind Rivers Camera. Take the cross walk to our front door.


Poetry Society of New Hampshire
Patricia L Frisella, President

282 Meaderboro Road
Farmington, NH 03835

603-332-0732

frisella@worldpath.net


events
Poetry Society of New Hampshire

Friday July 18th at 7pm, Artstream Gallery hosted a poetry reading organized by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire.
This wasn't like your mother’s poetry! Many people attended the reading, talked with the poets and enjoy the art on display in this bright, new gallery at 56 North Main Street, Rochester, NH. The current installation included John Ouelette’s sculpture, Stephanie Piro’s drawings and Robyn Cole’s manipulated polaroids. Martin Steingesser signed and sold his books, light refreshments were served.
The reading was a great success and the Poetry Society of New Hampshire will be coming again to artstream this fall.

Featured readers included John-Michael Albert, Dianna Durham, Neil English, Pat Frisella, John Nolan, Deanna O’Shaughnessey, Leslie Snow, Martin Steingesser, Maren Tirabassi, and others. These poets represent the diversity of contemporary poetry from neo-formalism to slam.

John-Michael Albert, a musician and poet, lives in Dover, NH with his cat. He works at the University of NH in the music department, where in March he gave a concert recital entitled To Sleep, Two Song Cycles including work by Robert Schyumann and Benjamin Britten. Mike’s booming tenor voice laced with Texas is famous in poetry circles and marvelous in concert. His poems have appeared in the anthologies Portsmouth Unabridged and Images from Ruin.

Diana Durham lives in Portsmouth, NH with her husband and young children. Along with Maren Tirabassi and humorist, Rebecca Rule, she has written and performed two word collage programs, "Three Voices" and "Walking the Moose to Shore." The architecture of landscape and personality are frequent themes in her work, and her gentle rendering in a voice rounded as the Cotswold Hills of her childhood make her a popular reader.

Neil English, carpenter, Viet Nam veteran, and father of two grown children, lives in Epsom, NH, with his wife Leigh, a calligrapher, and their two cats. He has been performing for lucky audiences in churches, libraries, lodges and at just about every open mic he can. While he is best known for his straw hat, big beard and humor, he can surprise with his range of subject matter and treatment. His work has been included in the anthologies Portsmouth Unabridged and Images from Ruin.

Pat Frisella lives on a tree farm with her husband, two teenage children, and a menagerie of creatures large and small. While she had a few poems published in high school, she spent most of her writing time on essays, short stories and magazine articles until about 15 years ago when she returned to poetry. She says, "Poetry draws on my love of music and art, imagery and rhythm, and allows me to record what is going on in my head." Her work is influenced by her study of Spanish and French existentialist writers, early surrealist and abstract art, and the deep seated conviction that poetry can change and save us. President of the Poetry Society of New Hampshire, she has work forthcoming in Tapestries and The Margie Review.

John Nolan, alien, newspaper man, musician, humorist, and doggerelist often travels cloaked in the pseudonym, Ramgumschoch. He and his wife, cartoonist Stephanie Piro, her teenage daughter, and their cats live in Farmington, NH. John is a keen and lanky supporter of the greater Rochester arts community, and is often seen lugging a large camera and heard speaking in thick Scots. Frequently, he hosts all night jam sessions of bagpipers, singers, banjo pickers, button accordionists, and the random poet - often in honor of Robert Burns, and always in honor of Scotch.

Martin Steingesser performing

Deanna O’Shaugnessy is a snowbird, spending her winters in Key West and her summers at Joy Hill in Alton, NH. Wherever she is, she’s a beautiful minstrel. The past few summers she has organized poetry readings in Alton drawing on the community at large, and inviting cable tv to record the sessions. Her work recently appeared in Once Upon an Island: A Collection of New Key West Authors. Deanna’s work is highly imagistic and her delievry passionate.

Leslie Snow is a fine arts painter and renaissance woman. For thirteen years she danced on Broadway and the concert stage with companies including those of Martha Graham and Charles Weidman. In 1967 she moved to Snowville, NH, with her husband, sculptor Louis Feron. Shortly after her husband’s death five years ago, a few lines of poetry came to her as she was dropping off to sleep. She got up and recorded them. On the same night the phenomenon repeated itself several times. She has been writing and delighting audiences with her formalist poetry since.

Martin Steingesser, a performance poet comes to us from Portland, ME, where he works withthe Maine Arts commission’s touring Artist and Artist in residence Programs. Baron Wormser, Poet Laureate of Maine, describes Martin’s poems in the recently released collectio, Brothers of Morning, as articulating "... the many seasons of the heart - joy, outrage, longing, whimsy, sadness ... in a ... burning, tender voice that rejoices in the ungainly spendors of human feeling." Poet Laure-Anne Bosselaar describes Steingesser as a"musician, acrobat and teacher."

Maren Tirabassi of Portsmouth, NH, is a woman who wears many hats - mother, wife, daughter, friend, minsiter - and wears them all with grace. She is a poet, liturgical writer, and pastor of the Northwood Congregational Church. Her books include Faith Made Visible and The Depth of Wells. She recently completed her work as Portsmouth Poet Laureate, including the publication of the anthology Portsmouth Unabridged, which she edited. Her poems "Blockbuster" and "Humane Society" are typical of the poignancy with which she treats difficult subjects. (I use Rathunde’s definition of poignancy - "finding positive meaning within loss")