“An Afternoon of Poetry” was presented by Food for Thought Books, Perugia Press, Jones Library and the Everywoman’s Center at the Jones Library in Amherst on Sunday, Feb. 3. Featured were six poets hailing from all corners of the United States, from as far as Texas to as close as Northampton. All are published and award-winning female poets.

Laurie Guerrero is currently an Ada Comstock Scholar at Smith College. She is a two-time winner of the Rosemary Tomas Poetry Prize and has been published in Palo Alto Review, the 2007 and 2008 Texas Poetry Calendars and Literary Mama. Her forthcoming chapbook was selected as the winner of the Panhandler Publishing competition.

Johnston works as a social worker and is a member of the Florence Poets Society. She has been published in Silkworm, Equinox, and the anthology, “Women. Period.” She has a chapbook composed of sensual poetry titled “Struck Just So.”

Kim Rogers, the winner of the 2007 Ruth Olin Corbin Prize for Poetry and Pulp City Magazine’s Short Story Prize in 2000, has been published in American Writing.

Keli Stewart is the winner of the Douglas Turner Ward/Alice Childress Scriptwriting Award. Her chapbook is titled “Womanish.”

Lynne Thompson is the Perugia Prize winner for this year and the author of “Beg No Pardon,” the winner of the Great Lakes Colleges Association 2008 New Writers Award.

Nikky Finney is the 2007-08 Graze Hazard Conkling Writer-in-Residence at Smith College. Her poetry book, “Rice,” has been awarded the P.E.N. American Book Award.

The topics covered were broad in range, the poets passionate in voice. Subjects varied from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to an Indian girl born with eight limbs and two torsos, from dump trucks to pornography, from double-dutch to Robert Johnson. All were covered with brilliant metaphor and laden with personal experience, often painful.

At one point Keli Stewart said that her son, who she used to hold at her hip during her readings when he was smaller, was to leave the room before she read a sexually graphic poem. She said that this was necessary because lately he had been repeating everything she said.

The down-to-earth nature of these poets along with their genuine joy and honor at being together and experiencing one another’s work made for a warm, unintimidating atmosphere, which is not always the case at a poetry reading.

“Never, ever take this for granted,” said Finney of the crowd gathered in the Jones Library on Sunday. “You make us weep,” she said of the young poets and writers in the process of publishing their work. The contented murmur of the audience after nearly every poem seemed to echo these sentiments.

“The people had not poet and so the people died.” Finney used this quote from a favorite author to describe her feeling for her work and the work of other poets. She expressed joy at the fact that people still come to readings in our fast-paced modern times.

In our vibrant community, we have the rare opportunity to experience the art of the written word at the many readings that occur not only in Amherst, but in the surrounding area as well. Food for Thought Books and the Everywoman’s Center sponsor regular events during the academic year, a list of which can be found on their Web sites.

Nikky Finney will be reading her work again this week at the Coolidge Museum of Forbes Library in Northampton at 7 p.m.

Sophia Pastore can be reached at [email protected].