Thetford resident Elisabeth Horan will read from her new book of poems, “Self-Portrait”, a tribute to the life and art of Frida Kahlo. Slides of the paintings that inspired each poem will accompany the reading. Refreshments will be served and books will be for sale.
‘In the wake of damage, it’s often necessary for us to examine every mangled piece of ourselves to find a way to love again, to live. Elisabeth Horan’s Self-Portrait, a collection of poems giving beautiful voice to Frida Kahlo as survivor and conqueror, has the courage to confront any pain and loss it finds. As Horan writes, “There is nothing I won’t touch,” and we are all blessed by this courage line by line in Self-Portrait. These poems lie down in broken glass. They caress the sharp edges of shards left after the breaking. And while these lines carry loss and injury, they also manage to find beauty in every shattered piece, each refraction of light, each laugh and each tear. Horan is a poet so at home in the body, in the blood, in the meat and the knife, it’s astonishingly easy to make the leap from carnage to incarnate in these poems with her, to heal and to praise, to feel Frida Kahlo’s breath on our cheeks as we read these pages.’—Jack B. Bedell, Poet Laureate, State of Louisiana, 2017-2019, author of No Brother, This Storm