Poetry and Jazz featuring John Matthias's book launch "Acoustic Shadows". FREE event. 

Doors open at 7:30 with music by "The Merriman Trio featuring Jim Steele" 

8:00 - 9:00: Readings by John Matthias, solo and with the trio. 

9:00 - 9:30 ish: The trio will perform.

John  Matthias taught creative writing and modern literature at the  University of Notre Dame for forty years and continues to work as Editor  at Large of Notre Dame Review.  He is also a Life Member of Clare Hall,  Cambridge, where he first went as Poetry Fellow in the 1970s. He has  given readings of his poetry both nationally and internationally, and  his work has been translated into several languages.  Matthias has  published some thirty books of poetry, fiction, memoir, and literary  criticism. His books include three volumes of Collected Poems and the  recent collaborative volumes Revolutons (with printmaker Jean Dibble and  critic Robert Archambeau) and Regrounding a Pilgrimage (with John  Peck).  

His new volume of poems is "Acoustic Shadows", which is  to be officially launched at this poetry and jazz event. Copies of many  Matthias books, along with dozens of others which he has contributed to  the Merrimans’ Playhouse library, are available for sale at the  reading/performance. Book purchase encouraged as this is also a fundraiser: Any earnings derived from book sales go directly to the fund drive to acquire permanently for Merrimans’ Playhouse the  piano you will hear played at this event.