On March 19 The Back Room at The Mill announced a launch party to promote the release of Ivy Page's first book of poetry, “Any Other Branch”. This will be a night of friends, laughter, poetry and food in the intimate back room of The Mill Fudge Factory in Bristol, NH.
The event will take place on Thursday, April 25 from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. In addition to the mouth watering fudge and ice cream made from scratch, The Mill offers a full menu including gourmet raviolis, grilled paninis, fresh salads and a nice selection of wine and beer. There will be copies of “Any Other Branch” for sale at the restaurant or purchase one in advance at the Salmon Poetry website.
Ivy Page lives in the White Mountains of New Hampshire with her husband and two daughters. She holds an MFA in Poetry from New England College. Her work has appeared in journals such as "Night Train", "Poetry Quarterly", "Grey Sparrow Press", "Boston Literary Magazine", "The Houston Literary Review", "Midwest Literary Magazine" and "New Plains Review", among others. Her work has also been anthologized in Knocking at the Door: Approaching the Other.
She is the editor and founder of "Organs of Vision and Speech Magazine" and works to keep her local poetry community active by running a reading series for poets. Ivy teaches writing, literature, communication, publication, web publication, and history at colleges throughout New Hampshire. For more information visit her website.
Below is a sample from “Any Other Branch”
Branches**
for Eric
If I knew that those Sunday-school stories I heard would become
a ball of uncertainty rolling around inside me,
if my parents hadn’t kicked me out for dating the youth pastor wannabe,
and I hadn’t moved in with the married lesbian.
If the married lesbian hadn’t decided to divorce her husband
I wouldn’t have ended up living in Athens, Georgia where
I would, in the span of a week discover that my boyfriend was
cheating on me, miscarry our baby, and get mugged.
If I hadn’t moved in with my ex-boyfriend’s mother after that
and then in with a distant cousin in Milledgeville, Georgia
where I would find my perceptions altered by practicing the loss
of time through smoke and mushrooms, multiple partners
and practicing being Good Enough* at karaoke. Or if my drinking buddy
hadn’t said that the guy running the karaoke night
was gay, so that I challenged — I would bet her a beer that I could
get him in the sack, and if he hadn’t asked for my
number that same night only to tear it up a week later because I turned him
down because I was still only seventeen and wouldn’t be
let into the bar where he wanted to take me dancing. And if the drummer
in the band I sang for hadn’t done twelve shots of white
lightning the following New Year’s and then urinated on me in bed because
he was in diabetic shock, and if I hadn’t covered the shift
delivering pizzas for the girl I worked with, and if I hadn’t gone
to the party, where the guy that ran karaoke
read poetry, and I sang bad imitations of Janis Joplin—
then I wouldn’t have ended up in place of eight month snows,
married ten years to the guy that ran karaoke, and I wouldn’t be watching our
two children recreating games of hopeful daisy chains, and
animal clouds. And if we had chosen any other branch?
* “Good Enough” Sarah McLachlan
** After W.S. Merwin’s “One of the Lives”
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