In April 2020, we realized that we would not be able to have our wonderful planned 20th anniversary season with in-person performances and shows. How, we wondered, could we provide community and solace and inspiration with our physical doors closed?
Ben Luxon responded to this with his characteristic generosity, his love of poetry, and his awareness that poetry read aloud could fill that void we were all experiencing. And he gave to all this his incomparable taste and his incomparable voice.
Of the offerings we came up with in 2020 and early 2021 to share over the Internet, Ben reading poetry – some of his favorites, some of yours – was what most touched people.
These readings, in Ben’s voice, remain to provide community and solace and inspiration that we will always need.
Note: The Soundcloud audio recordings are on a subscription site of mine, thus my name in the URL. The YouTube video recordings are in the Sandisfield Arts Center YouTube site.
Video recording
May 2021: Poems I’ve Lived With and Love
Video by George Wheeler
Ben Luxon introduces and reads some of his favorite poems:
Rudyard Kipling, On The Road to Mandalay
Robert Service, Dangerous Dan McGrew
DH Lawrence, Love on the Farm
Christina Rossetti, When I’m Dead, My Dearest
Noel Coward, in a Bar on the Piccola Marina
Audio recordings
In chronological order
April 25, 2020: A Reading for the Sandisfield Arts Center Community
This reading is for the Sandisfield Arts Center community and the wider community of poetry lovers and humans everywhere.
Ben Luxon reads and introduces poems on a sunny Saturday April 25, 2020 in Sandisfield, as the world continues in the coronavirus pandemic.
The poems are, in order:
The Peace of Wild Things. Wendell Berry
The Lake Isle of Innisfree ? W. B. Yeats
The Way it is. William Stafford
Ironing Vicki Feaver [ British ]
Sometimes Sheenagh Pugh [ British ]
Happy the Man John Dryden
Two Sufi poems
The Guest House Jalaluddin Rumi
It happens all the Time in Heaven Hafez
Golden Retrievals Mark Doty
Warning Jenny Joseph [ British ]
All Things pass Lao Tsu [6th century BC Chinese]
Proud Songsters Thomas Hardy
Daffodils William Wordsworth
August 2020: Love poems Read by Ben Luxon for the Sandisfield Arts Center
https://soundcloud.com/hilde-weisert/sets/love-poetry-read-by-ben-luxon-sandisfield-arts-center
Sea Fever by John Masefield
Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare
To Celia by Ben Jonson
One Perfect Rose by Dorothy Parker
Summer Villanelle by Wendy Cope
The Going by Thomas Hardy
Mandalay by Rudyard Kipling
Love on the Farm by D.H. Lawrence
May 2020: Poems Selected by Our Donors Read by Ben Luxon for Giving Tuesday
How can an Arts Center whose doors are closed ask people to make donations on Giving Tuesday? Ben provided an answer, offering to read donor-selected poems on Giving Tuesday in May 2020. Our community responded with wonderful selections (and donations!)
Introduction
Irene Conley request, “Since There’s No Help” by Michael Drayton
Irene Conley request, “Here Is a Wound That Will Never Heal” by Edna St. Vincent Millay
Jayne Benjulian request, “Nothing Gold Can Stay” by Robert Frost
Jean Atwater-Williams request, “A Psalm of Life” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Joan Barasovska request, “Crossing” by Jericho Brown
Barbara Penn request, “Bone” by Mary Oliver
Ben introducing and reading with others in September 2019 “Today’s Poets in Conversation with the Masters”
The Fall before Covid-19, Ben was the introducer and a major part of the planning of this event.
Listen to the Sandisfield Arts Center presentation “Today’s Poets in Conversation with the Masters,” with poems of masters such as Frost, Auden, Wilbur, Plath, Owen, Boland, Kumin, Bynner, and Yeats performed by Ben Luxon and Sandisfield Players Mary Anne Grammer, Jean Atwater-Williams, Tina Sotis, and Val Coleman, in dialog with poems they have inspired by award-winning poets Hilde Weisert, Rebecca Hart Olander, Jayne Benjulian, Irene Willis, and others. James Kraft, distinguished writer and general editor of the works of Witter Bynner and the biography Who Is Witter Bynner?, provides an introduction to the life and work of Witter Bynner and reads several of the most enduring Bynner poems.