On Thursday, September 22 at 5pm, Djelloul Marbrook will read from his new book of poems, Brushstrokes and Glances, in the Great Room, Kaplan Hall 101, at the Newburgh campus of SUNY Orange. Following his reading, an opening reception for the art work of Juanita Guccione will be held at 6:30pm in the CenterArts Gallery in Kaplan Hall.
Djelloul Marbrook’s first book, Far from Algiers (Kent State University Press, 2008) won the 2007 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize and the 2010 International Book Award in poetry. “Artists’ Hill,” an excerpt from his unpublished novel, Crowds of One, won the 2008 Literal Latté first prize in fiction. Artemisia’s Wolf, a novella, was published by Prakash Books of India early in 2011. Alice Miller’s Room, a novella, was published in 1999 by OnlineOriginals.com (UK) as an e-book, and Bliss Plot Press of Woodstock, NY, recently published his novella, Saraceno, as an e-book. His short fiction has been published by Orbis (UK), Potomac Review (Maryland) and Prima Materia (New York). His second book of poems is Brushstrokes and Glances (Deerbrook Editions, 2010). Recent poems were published by American Poetry Review, Barrow Street, Oberon, Long Island Review, Meadowland Review, The Same, Reed, The Ledge, Poemeleon, Poets Against War, Fledgling Rag, Daylight Burglary, Le Zaporogue, Atticus, Long Island Quarterly, ReDactions, Istanbul Literary Review, Arabesques Literary and Cultural Review, Damazine, Perpetuum Mobile, Attic, and Chronogram. A retired newspaper editor and Navy veteran, he lives in Germantown, NY, with his wife Marilyn.
Many of his poems are influenced by art work, including those of his mother, renowned artist Juanita Guccione, and his aunt, Irene Rice Pereira. He has used his mother’s painting, “A Hole In Time” as the cover of his first book, Far from Algiers and a painting titled, “The Approaching Season” by his aunt as the cover of Brushstrokes and Glances.
Juanita Guccione’s oeuvre of more than 800 works has been described as Cubist, Realist, Surrealist, Automatist and Abstract, though her work has always hinted at a unique style that betrays an independence from usual thought and categorization. Guccione herself strayed far from the norm by living and thinking outside the box, especially for a woman living and working during the early half of the 20th century. Her work has been shown in Manhattan, Paris, Beirut, Bombay and San Francisco. Recent acquisitions of her work include The Malden Public Library in Massachusetts and the Lowe Art Museum at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida. The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie had one of her drawings on exhibit as part of the exhibit For the People: American Mural Drawings of the 1930s and 1940s from January 12 to March 11, 2007.
Juanita Guccione’s exhibit at CenterArts gallery will be open from September 22, 2011 to October 21, 2011.
For more information regarding “An Evening of Award-Winning Poetry and Art,” contact the Newburgh Cultural Affairs office at (845) 341-9386 or visit our website at www.sunyorange.edu/culturalaffairs.
For more information about Djelloul Marbrook, visit http://www.djelloulmarbrook.com/.
For more information about Juanita Guccione and her art work, visit http://www.juanitaguccione.com/.
