BELLOWS FALLS, Vt. — Take a warming break from the cold of deep winter with poetry, music, and magic from the Northeast Kingdom. The Rockingham Free Public Library, in collaboration with Flat Iron Coffee House and Village Square Booksellers, welcomes Vermont poet and musician, Toussaint St. Negritude, for a reading on Saturday, Jan. 18, to celebrate the launch of his debut collection of poems, “Mountain Spells.”
St. Negritude will read selections from “Mountain Spells,” tell stories, play the bass clarinet, and sign books on Saturday, Jan. 18, from 3 to 5 p.m., at the Flat Iron Cooperative Coffee House at 51 The Square in Bellows Falls, Vermont. This library-produced event is free and open to the public. At the event, representatives from Village Square Booksellers will have copies of “Mountain Spells” for sale, and the cafe will sell refreshments. The recommended attire for this event is “fabulous.”
Through the inspiration of life, jazz and nature, “Mountain Spells” is about the intrinsic clarity of emancipation, expressing all found intersections of what St. Negritude sees and experiences, and how this Black/queer/high-hat-wearing artist envisions the world through the lens of spirituality, the African diaspora and nature as his home. Each poem, written in Vermont, expresses the whole cosmos of collective liberation.
“I listened to the birds, to the sky, what the leaves were telling me,” said St. Negritude, and he captured it all in improvisational, freeform, and musical poetry, lovely and changing as the seasons themselves.
Former poet laureate of Belfast, Maine, and 2024 nominee for the poet laureateship of Vermont, poet, bass clarinetist, and composer St. Negritude conjures whole liberations in full tempo. His poetry has been published in Michigan Quarterly Review, Birchsong, Philadelphia Stories, Savannah Literary Journal, PoemCity, and the San Francisco Bay Guardian.
Originally from San Francisco, St. Negritude has lived and broadly thrived across the African Diaspora, from the sacred mountains of Haiti, to the Coltrane District of North Philadelphia. He, along with bassist Gahlord Dewald, is the leader of the band Jaguar Stereo!, a free-form ensemble of his own poetry and improvisational jazz. His works have been widely published and recorded for over 40 years. On an alpine sanctuary facing east, St. Negritude continues to thrive in the farthest elevations of the Northeast Kingdom. “Mountain Spells” is his first traditionally published volume of poetry.
Flat Iron Cooperative Coffee House is a worker- and consumer-owned cooperative cafe offering coffee, tea, baked goods, and unique gift items, many of them designed and made locally. Village Square Booksellers is a full-service, independent, general bookstore. Founded in 1992, the bookstore was purchased in January 2024 by long-time employee, Myles Mickle. The Rockingham Free Public Library, founded in 1799, is one of four Carnegie libraries in Vermont, and has existed in its current building — designed by Boston architects McLean & Wright in Classic Revival style — since 1909.
For more information on the event, contact the library at 802-463-4270 or at rockinghamlibrary.org/. For more information about the author, visit toussaintstnegritude.com/.
