When artist Patrick Healey set out to paint the homes of 14 Seacoast poets for his collaborative project, “The Poet’s House,” he quickly learned that poets have a flexible idea of what makes a home. There are some houses among the paintings, but there are also streams and skylines and signs along the highway. A home doesn’t need four walls to serve as shelter for the psyche.
Healey will unveil the oil on linen paintings on Sunday, Oct. 4, at The Music Hall Loft in Portsmouth, where he’ll be accompanied by each of the poets, who’ll read their work, and live music.
For Healey, painting poets’ houses is a way to capture the feeling of hearing poetry. A good poem is its own shelter, a sort of comfortable retreat. “I’m a visual artist who has had the good fortune to stumble upon a fantastic group of poets,” says Healey. “I have said it before: when I hear a good poet read I feel like I am suddenly breathing fresh air.”
Healey’s art is a familiar sight in Portsmouth, and the artist himself is a familiar sight in Ceres Bakery. The project’s roots stretch back to 2003, when he painted Robert Frost’s barn in Londonderry. He titled it “The Poet’s House,” even though it was not Frost’s actual home.
Six years later, in 2009, he joined a poetry group with former Portsmouth Poet Laureate Kimberly Cloutier Green. They formed a creative friendship, and Healey participated in the “creation circles” that were part of Green’s poet laureate project in 2013.
“I was struck with how dedicated (poets) are to their work and how generous they were to helping me write. Since 2009, I have been in many poetry groups and my respect for the poets has only grown,” he says.
Healey approached Green last October about doing a project that would “honor and involve” poets. She became a sort of producer, helping Healey choose 13 writers from in and around the Seacoast whose homes stretch from Lowell, Mass., to Portland, Maine. Green is also one of the project’s subjects.
“I was struck with how dedicated (poets) are to their work and how generous they were to helping me write. — Patrick Healey
Healey thought, “What if I have a poetry reading and paint the poets’ houses? This gives me a role at the reading, kind of like the musicians at Beat Night (the regular poetry reading that is backed by musicians). That’s the part that might be called my idea. It is truly a small part of this endeavor, but it hooks me up with the poets and gives me a chance to be part of an event that honors them and their amazing art,” he says.
The poets include Portsmouth Poet Laureate Kate Leigh, Maine Poet Laureate Betsy Sholl, and local poets Bill Burtis and Shelley Girdner, among many others. All 14 writers welcomed Healey into their homes — or, in some cases, to areas outside their homes — for a look at where they live, write, and think.
The conversations and the paintings that resulted were as varied as the poets’ personalities.
Sholl met Healey for the first time when he visited her home in Portland, Maine. She did nothing to prepare her space except move some books off the couch. To Sholl, “A poet’s house includes the windows and doors that allow the writer to enter and leave the world outside — to retreat and reflect, and to go out and engage. It is shelter and a private space, and the vantage point from which the writer can look out and create a dialogue between the inner and outer life.”
Girdner was one of the poets who did not highlight a physical residence for the project. She currently lives in Madbury, but it’s Dover that feels the most like home to her, “especially the stretch between the public library and the coffee shop Adelle’s, on down the hill to Henry Law Park and the river.” For this reason, she and Healey talked about a more metaphoric home. Girdner and Healey knew each other through one of Green’s creation circles.
“I got to see how talented, engaged, encouraging and wildly creative he is,” Girdner says. “I admire his work and way of thinking and was happy to have a chance to collaborate with him. I’m excited to see the paintings, which will be beautiful, but also almost as excited to hear him talk about the work. He always surprises me.”
Healey says Girdner’s choice of inspiration was especially interesting, because she talked about road signs — like a route between homes. Girdner says, “I just really love the drive south on I-95 and the conjuring power of names like White Plains in New York, or the Oranges in Jersey. I grew up in central Virginia and the stretch from Richmond to Charlottesville always charmed me with its names, like Big Stone Gap, Rockville, Zion Crossroads. I want to pull off and visit the Cadillac Motel, or take a swim in the Rappahannock River.”
In one of the paintings, Healey had to choose between two homes. Burtis, a poet who lives in Stratham with his partner, Nancy Jean Hill, says that a poet’s house is “a place where poetry is written and, in that sense, a sanctuary. … Ours is pretty compact, quite sunny, and happens to house a sweet dog and a cantankerous cat, as well. We are also fortunate enough to have a lakeside retreat in Readfield, Maine, where we also write, though we spend more time sitting on the float staring at the mesmerizing splendor of nature.”
From conversations like this, Healey honed in on what he felt was each poet’s true home. In Burtis and Hill’s case, the painting is of their Readfield, Maine house. Like a good poem, the paintings are a surprise — the poets won’t see them until the Oct. 4 event.
The project prompted Green to think about how she defines home. She lives in Kittery Point, Maine. “When he came to take pictures of my house, I asked him to take a short walk with me to a nearby bridge. Looking down the creek toward the harbor, the water just then beginning its ebb flow, I said something to him about home being, for me, something like the pause between the outflowing and the inflowing tides … or like the silence just before the birds begin to sing.”
That pause, that silence, may be difficult to capture with words, but it’s at home on Healey’s canvases.
The Poet’s House takes place Sunday, Oct. 4 at 4 p.m. at The Music Hall Loft, 131 Congress St., Portsmouth. Tickets are $20 and are available at 603-436-2400 or at themusichall.org.