Tim Mayo & Carlene Kucharczyk in Rutland at Phoenix Books Rutland – Rutland, VT

Phoenix Books is excited to host Vermont poet Tim Mayo in conversation with Vermont Book Award winner Carlene Kucharczyk in Rutland! Join us on the evening of Monday, August 10th for a poetry reading, book signing, and Q&A with the authors.

About Muscle Memories of Love and Disaster by Tim Mayo: Muscle Memories of Love and Disaster explores the arc of a life shaped by loss and renewed by love. The poems intertwine to explore grief from the loss of loved ones (a lover, a daughter and close friends), early memories of growing up in an immigrant foster home, later memories of working in a mental hospital, the poet’s own recovery from addiction, the emotional and spiritual impact of a near death and life-changing accident with its lasting, crippling effects, and an acceptance of a life nearing its own chronological end. Although there is a darkness in these poems, they belie the empathy and subtle humor in the poems and the joy of finding love in later life after so much loss.

About Tim: Tim Mayo is the author of two previous full-length poetry collections, The Kingdom of Possibilities (2009), and Thesaurus of Separation (2016) and two chapbooks, The Loneliness of Dogs (2008) and Notes to the Mental Hospital Timekeeper (2019). He holds an ALB, cum laude, from Harvard University and an MFA from Bennington College. A ten-time Pushcart Prize Nominee, and a two-time finalist for the Paumanok Award, Mayo is also the recipient of three Vermont Writers Fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center, as well as being a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Award and the Montaigne Medal. He lives in Brattleboro, VT, where he has worked for fifteen years at the Brattleboro Retreat, a mental institution, as both a teacher and a mental health worker, and where he is also a founding member and organizer of the Brattleboro Literary Festival.

About Strange Hymn by Carlene Kucharczyk: Strange Hymn is a meticulously crafted lyrical journey exploring morality and humanity. The poems here grapple with understanding physical loss. They also engage with the more abstract slipping away of memory and time. Kucharczyk’s insightful poems blur the lines between history and myth, love and grief, song and silence, often caught between lamenting the passage of time and rejoicing in small beauties. Each moment reflects on our ephemeral lives from musings on art and nature to reflections on the self. As readers traverse this collection, they learn how the body sings, the many iterations of Mary, what sirens truly think of Odysseus, how a Morning Glory unfurls, and lessons in orthodontics, but most importantly, how to live with absence. Kucharczyk is a master of manipulating time and space through her dynamic use of form, creating a narrative that begs, ‘After I’m gone, don’t bury my body- / Burn it, and turn it into song'”

About Carlene: Carlene Kucharczyk’s debut collection Strange Hymn is the winner of the Juniper Prize for Poetry and the Vermont Book Award, and was published by the University of Massachusetts Press in 2025. Her poems have been nominated several times for a
Pushcart Prize, and her poetry and lyric essays have been published in journals such as
Mid-American Review, Poetry Northwest, Conduit, Meetinghouse, and Bloodroot, and
as a postcard with Send Me Press. She is the recipient of a creation grant from the
Vermont Arts Council and a research fellowship from the New York Public Library. She
works as an administrative assistant in the Dartmouth English and Creative Writing
department and lives in Vermont.

DATE: Monday, August 10, 2026 at 6:30 PM

LOCATION: Phoenix Books, 2 Center Street, Rutland, VT

ADMISSION: This event is free and open to all. Please RSVP at the link above.

BOOKS: Books by Tim Mayo and Carlene Kucharczyk will be available for purchase at the event.