Peterborough Poetry Project

"Poetry lays out our thoughts to share with others, hopefully encouraging others to do the same and thereby appreciate the similarities and differences of other people," Chatfield, 74, said. "Poetry can help people know they are not alone in a cold, indifferent world."

Soon after creating the Peterborough Poetry Project, Chatfield realized he did not want to do it by himself, so he asked five people to join the board of directors: Rachel Sturges, Yvonne Gifford, Les Orsini, Michael Strand and Carol Nelson. Nelson served for one year before being replaced by Veronika Sokol. Gifford is a former technical writer for the U.S. Postal Service; Orsini is a former high school English teacher and journalist; Strand graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English and history from the University of Florida with a poetry focus; Sturges was the N.H. youth poet laureate from 2019-20 and is a published poet; and Sokol is a N.H. youth poet laureate ambassador.

The group's first project was to revive the traditional Peterborough Book Fair in May 2019. The event brought together 13 antiquarian booksellers and half a dozen local authors to raise money for the Peterborough Town Library. The book fair included a student poetry contest, with a reading at the fair by the contest winners.

One of the ways the Peterborough Poetry Project promotes poetry is through public contests, inviting poets of all experiences to put forward their work.

In fall 2019, the Peterborough Poetry Project held a “Poems of New Hampshire” contest that drew 160 entries from New England and beyond. That contest culminated in the project's first publication, the 48-poem book “On & Off the Road: Poems of New Hampshire,” which came out in February 2020.

The Peterborough Poetry Project had planned more poetry readings for March 2020 to promote its first anthology, but then the COVID-19 pandemic hit, making those plans impossible. However, the project adapted to the new socially distanced way of life, shifting its focus to publishing three additional books in 2020 and three more in 2021.

One of those books, "Day after Day in Quarantine," offers works from 22 poets from eight states, including New Hampshire, and two columns on writing by published poets. The poems, written between April and October 2020, focus on the emotions each poet felt during quarantine, including isolation, loss of intimacy and the quest for hope.

The project has published works by poets from about a dozen states in its four anthologies, but poets from New Hampshire and New England are the group's main contributors. The Peterborough Poetry Project has received poems from states as far away as California and Washington, and even other countries such as Bangladesh and Nigeria.

The project has now published seven books of poetry — four anthologies and three individual collections of poems. Its books include “On and Off the Road: Poems of New Hampshire”; "Out of Darkness" by Chatfield; “Day after Day in Quarantine”; “you, genesis,” by Rachel Sturges; and Chatfield's latest, "We Are Stardust: the universe in verse." The project's two latest books were just published in June: “Tiger Lovin’ Blues: A Bob Dylan Collection,” edited by N.H.-based author and journalist Dan Szczesny, and “Post Script: An anthology of post card poetry,” from one of the project's poetry contests.

The Peterborough Poetry Project has now conducted nine poetry contests. Its latest, the Cosmic Poetry Contest, is a collaboration with French astrophysicist and poet Jean-Pierre Luminet and Wayne Allen Jones, president of the Poets Club of Chicago, who are judging entries.

The Peterborough Poetry Project works with several New England writing groups and merchant sponsors, especially the Toadstool Bookshop in Peterborough, which co-sponsored the poetry reading by three N.H. Youth Poet Laureates in September 2019, and has since sponsored several more poetry readings in cooperation with the project.

Chatfield, who created the Peterborough Poetry Project after retiring from U.S. Postal Service headquarters in Washington, D.C., in 2014, has had a lifelong interest in poetry, which he derived from his mother and her father’s love of writing and reading poetry, he said. That love of poetry led him to do something to encourage other people to express their poetic thoughts.

He has been writing poetry for nearly 60 years, since around the time he was in high school.

"I find myself trying to explain the natural world, relationships, and the wider universe through poetry — sometimes rhyming, sometimes free verse," Chatfield said.

He says the Peterborough Poetry Project is looking forward to holding many more poetry contests and readings when public health protocols allow, as well as continuing to publish books.

The project plans to hold a book signing event in Peterborough on Saturday, Sept. 25. So far, about a dozen authors have signed up, including the current N.H. Poet Laureate, Alexandria Peary, and Pete Kennedy of The Kennedys folk music duo.

Through its contests, events and books, the Peterborough Poetry Project is working to keep poetry alive and thriving in the region. As stated on its website: "Write poems when they come to you, before they evaporate."