Meg Weston reads from her first full-length collection of poems, Magma Intrusions, along with Betsy Sholl, former Maine Poet Laureate, who reads from her tenth collection, As If a Song Could Save You. The readings are followed by a conversation about the obsessions and harmonies in their poems; poetic influences and writing practices; and other topics that intrigue us as poets.

“The wisest poets instinctually follow their obsessions. That is true of Meg Weston, whose unique obsession with volcanoes and geology is utterly captivating.

These poems transform and transport us by rendering the ancient earth as a living, breathing presence that surrounds our daily lives. Weston’s intriguing metaphors allows us a keener understanding of the many complexities and contradictions of life: the smodering secrets of family that erupt, then cool; love, either flowing through us like lava, or slowly carving through our hearts like a glacier; and the lofty peach we all seek as the solid rock right underneath our very feet.”

—Richard Blanco, 2013 Presidential Inaugural Poet, author of How to Love A Country

“Attuned as she is to harmony—musical, spiritual, earthly—Sholl weaves seemingly miscellaneous notes into vibrant wholes.

She references Dante more than once and it’s apt, for she is very much a pilgrim, someone who conveys the feeling of being in it—the tangle that is a moment, a street scene, a biblical incident—and that is a key to her achievement, her openness to the ways of being. Great compassion marks these poems, that inestimable talent for tracing the ways of kinship, how one occasion graces another.”

—Baron Wormser