Cozy Afternoon by Fact & Fiction with Local Poets at Missoula Public Library

Join Missoula poets Aaron Jennings, Dave Thomas, James Jay, Mark Gibbons, and Sheryl Noethe for an afternoon of tea and poetry at the Missoula Public Library. Poets will share their work with the audience, and Aaron Jennings will play live music leading up to and shortly after the event. Fact and Fiction will be on hand to sell work from the authors.

Wailing Aaron Jennings is a singer and songwriter living in Missoula, Montana. A third-generation Montanan who had the good luck or bad timing to be born in Texas. Inspired and challenged by a book of songs and poetry written by his Great-Grandfather; a singing cowboy in the 1920’s and the words “Yodel Here” a young punk unplugged his guitar and started hooting and hollering in the mountains, valleys, and tunnels.

Dave Thomas is never just somewhere, he’s somewhere you never know until he writes it…a burst of shadows…growing new beans in the guts of despair… Railroad Gravel is a book of praise poems for a way through this world… our history smoldering and flaming all around us…with friends, many of whom have dissolved into ink and now you, dear reader. –Craig Czury, author of Postcards & Ancient Texts

James Jay has taught poetry and writing at public schools, jails, community colleges, Northern Arizona University, the University of Nebraska Omaha, and given Irish Literature lectures at the Arizona Highland Celtic Festival. For a decade, he served as the president of the Northern Arizona Book Festival. He recently attended the Yeats International Summer School in Sligo. Currently, he teaches poetry for the Missoula Writing Collaborative. His poetry and fiction have appeared in Cutbank, Fourteen Hills, A Dozen Nothing, The Huffington Post, and numerous other journals and magazines. His poetry was selected for the New Poets of the American West anthology. For a decade he wrote a biweekly column, Bartender Wisdom, for FlagLive!, an arts and entertainment newspaper. He owns a pub with his wife, the musician and runner Aly Jay. They have two sons and three dogs (they’re a wily pack). As often as he can, he plays the ancient Irish game of hurling as a fullback for the Thomas Meagher Hurling Club in Missoula, Montana, and he’s the head coach for the University of Montana Griz Hurling Club.

Mark Gibbons grew up in Alberton, Montana, where in 1970 he took a poetry workshop in high school taught by an unpublished poet, James Welch. A student of Richard Hugo’s, Welch, went on to become an acclaimed Native American writer. He gave Mark permission to write poetry in his own voice, out of his own experiences, and he has been writing ever since. Gibbons taught high school English for a decade and earned an MFA in creative writing from the University of Montana. The first college graduate in his Irish-immigrant family, Mark has held a variety of the blue-collar jobs available to those determined to stay in Montana at all costs. He’s taught poetry in Montana for forty years and was involved with Poetry Out Loud for the last two decades, since its inception. Mark served as the 10 th Montana Poet Laureate and is the author of thirteen collections of poetry. Mark lives with his wife, Pam, in Missoula.

Sheryl Noethe is a poet and founder of the Missoula Writing Collaborative. Noethe is the author of the poetry collections Grey Dog Big Sky (FootHills Publishing, 2013); As Is (Lost Horse Press, 2009); The Ghost Openings (Grace Court Press, 2000), winner of a 2001 Pacific Northwest Book Award; and The Descent of Heaven Over the Lake (New Rivers Press, 1984). Noethe is also the coauthor with Jack Collom of Poetry Everywhere: Teaching Poetry Writing in School and in the Community (Teachers & Writers Collaborative, 1994). Noethe has received a CutBank Richard Hugo Memorial Poetry Award, a Minnesota Voices Award from New Rivers Press, and an Academy of American Poets Award. She was also the recipient of a 1998 Montana Arts Council Fellowship, a McKnight Fellowship, and a 1990 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. In 2004, Noethe was recognized for her work in Missoula schools with the Cultural Achievement Award from the Missoula Cultural Council. In 2011, Noethe became Montana’s fourth Poet Laureate, an office she held until 2013. The Montana Arts Council awarded her the Artist Innovation Award in 2021. She is the poetry editor for High Desert Journal.

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