The next Friday Night Dialogues features the library’s annual poetry reading and honors its co-founder, the late Bliss Morehead.
Certain individuals seem to have an outsized impact in a small community. It’s often inadvertent, flowing from a passion for something that resonates deeply with others.
Morehead was such a person, and poetry was her wellspring. So profound was her appreciation of the art that she devoted much of her energy to studying, crafting, submitting, publishing, performing, critiquing, and celebrating poems.
As FND resumes in-person gatherings on Friday, April 22 at 7 PM, all are welcome to attend. Local poets who took part in a new contest set up in Morehead’s honor will read their work.
‘A first-class brain’
An urban sophisticate with major advertising industry chops, Morehead came to Shelter Island at the urging of her husband, Mike Zisser, a former adman, and widely respected abstract painter.
She soon connected with like-minded poetry enthusiasts, joining what became a weekly Poetry Roundtable at the Shelter Island Public Library.
“Bliss had a first-class brain,” said Karen Kiaer, a group member. “She was a serious researcher who knew her poets.”
These Tuesday discussions, begun in the early ’90s, continued over decades (not entirely without controversy, since poetry, after all, runs deep).
“We had to move to Zoom with the pandemic,” Kiaer said. “There’s an upside to the tech, though — we have poets from as far away as Scotland now.”
Annual poetry readings
Morehead was a great collaborator who found an able partner in the library’s Adult Programming Director, Jocelyn Ozolins.
Together they orchestrated an annual poetry reading, held every April since 2014, celebrating National Poetry Month.
“Bliss would come up with a theme each year, then carefully curate the poems and twist a few arms to enlist readers,” Ozolins said. “Working side by side, I grew to appreciate her wry sense of humor and, of course, her knowledge of poetry.”
One frequent participant, poet Kathleen Goldhirsch recollected, “Bliss always provided us with black folders containing the poems to be read. She also had a dress code. I always wore a black sweater and black trousers or a skirt. Everything was very comme il faut.”
Poetry and paintings
Morehead and Zisser also produced a book, “Sightlines,” wedding her poems with his paintings and generating an exquisite and provocative conversation on the page.
In the foreword of this 2002 publication, Morehead wrote: “The relationship between poetry and painting is an elusive one, yet at its center, it is as rare and enduring as platinum or tungsten. These two elements are particularly pertinent in this, our first collaboration; platinum suggesting the continuity of a marriage, tungsten the revealing sparks generated by two artists of different genres living together.”
Funding future poets
With her inimitable voice and her exactingly high standards, poets and poetry lovers, librarians, and students, miss Bliss.
But her family’s loss, particularly her husband’s, defies imagining, compounded by the death of their son, Nicholas, last year. Yet, Zisser forged a powerful path forward.
He endowed the Bliss Morehead Poetry Grant, with a $1,000 award to be administered each year for a decade at the library, the place that nurtured her poetic aspirations. Join us at this year’s poetry reading, and hear from the inaugural winner and runners-up.
Next Up: On Friday, May 13 at 7 PM, Shelter Island Town Supervisor Gerry Siller presents the State of the Town, sponsored by the League of Women Voters.
Bonnie Berman Stockwell is a trustee of the Shelter Island Public Library.
