Poet-in-residence

NCMF's World Premiere this summer of 2012 is Andrea Clearfield's Three Tenses of Light. Newburyport poet Rhina Espaillat wrote the libretto, and was inspired in turn by the work of Ipswich artist, Andrew Anderson-Bell.

Dominican-born Rhina P. Espaillat has published poems, essays, short stories and translations in numerous magazines and over fifty anthologies, in both English and her native Spanish, as well as three chapbooks and eight full-length books, including three in bilingual format. Her most recent are a poetry collection in English, Her Place in These Designs, and a bilingual collection of her short stories, El olor de la memoria / The Scent of Memory. Honors include the Richard Wilbur Award, the T. S. Eliot Prize in Poetry, the Robert Frost Award for Translation, the May Sarton Award, a Lifetime Achievement in the Arts Award from Salem State College, and several prizes from the Dominican Republic's Ministry of Culture. Espaillat was Keynote Speaker at the 2010 West Chester Poetry Conference, which she has attended and served as a faculty member for many years.